Joan Lindsay

It's Question 7 by Richard Flanagan.

My final recommendation is Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay.

Okay, close your eyes.

All

So the reading experience is fantastic.

Highly recommend it.

But it gets even more intriguing if you learn a little bit about Joan Lindsay, the author.

She was 71 years old when she published this book, and she'd been a working writer for decades before this.

No.

Okay, so when Joan Lindsay, is that her name? Lindsay Joan? Joan Lindsay, yeah.

How dare she have two first names? I can't tell which way around it goes.

Joan Lindsay wrote it.

She wrote an 18th chapter.

Okay.

Andrew, what did you read for this week's episode of our show where each week one of us reads a book and tells the other person about it? Oh, I read Picnic at Hanging Rock

by Joan Lindsay.

Ah, yes.

The Picnic at Hanging Rock.

But Lindsay herself, also not someone who wrote a lot of books.

This is the book.

If you are a Joan Lindsay head, I mean, there are a few others.

Yeah, she did a few other things, including like a one children's book that came out like a couple of years before she died.

Most novelists get better after their debut.

I think like Philip K. Dick and John Wyndham, even Joan Lindsay, Picnic at Hanging Rock wasn't her first.

So yeah, I think novelists get better after their debut, generally speaking.

Or you can be, I mean, like, I think that's the natural progression, which is good because you're building into your craft.

I went through a sort of girls in smocks genre, I think.

Um, you know, your kind of Rose Park and your, um, Joan Lindsay, The Ha- Pink Bikini Hang Rock is kind of a more elevated version of that.

And then The Getting of Wisdom is a boarding school book, but the main character is singular, like they all are.

She's, she's, she's on the outside.