Thanks for your comments Bookworm_Girl. I also liked AnotherCat's statement. Normally I would be left very frustrated by the lack of a resolution, which would perhaps even have spoiled the whole book for me. But not in this case. And I'm not exactly sure why. Perhaps it is because the book wasn't really your typical whodidit. Whilst the disappearances were central to the plot, perhaps they were really more the background for the real story, which was about the people and their reaction to the disappearances and the place and the heat and the eerie atmosphere of the rock. If I had to describe what the book was about I would probably describe it more as being about the effects on the community of the disappearances. The beginning of Chapter Ten sticks in my mind in this regard:
Quote:
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The reader taking a bird’s eye view of events since the picnic will have noted how various individuals on its outer circumference have somehow become involved in the spreading pattern: Mrs Valange, Reg Lumley, Monsieur Louis Montpelier, Minnie and Tom – all of whose lives have already been disrupted, sometimes violently. So too have the lives of innumerable lesser fry – spiders, mice, beetles – whose scuttlings, burrowings and terrified retreats are comparable, if on a smaller scale. At Appleyard College, out of a clear sky, from the moment the first rays of light had fired the dahlias on the morning of Saint Valentine’s Day, and the boarders, waking early, had begun the innocent interchange of cards and favours, the pattern had begun to form. Until now, on the evening of Friday the thirteenth of March, it was still spreading; still fanning out in depth and intensity, still incomplete. On the lower levels of Mount Macedon it continued to spread, though in gayer colours, to the upper slopes, where the inhabitants of Lake View, unaware of their allotted places in the general scheme of joy and sorrow, light and shade, went about their personal affairs as usual, unconsciously weaving and interweaving the individual threads of their private lives into the complex tapestry of the whole.
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So perhaps a resolution of the disappearance of the girls was not really necessary. If this is the explanation then Joan Lindsay has inadvertently achieved a rare and difficult feat of writing.