'A compulsive, note-perfect debut for fans of The Virgin Suicides and Picnic at Hanging Rock
''We lost all three girls that summer. Let them slip away like the words of some half-remembered song and when one came back, she wasn't the one we were trying to recall to begin with.'
'Tikka Molloy was eleven and one-sixth years old during the long hot summer of 1992, growing up in a distant suburb in Australia surrounded by encroaching bushland. That summer, the hottest on record, was when the Van Apfel sisters – Hannah, the beautiful Cordelia and Ruth – mysteriously disappeared during the school's Showstopper concert, held at the outdoor amphitheatre by the river. Did they run away? Were they taken? While the search for the sisters unites the small community, the mystery of their disappearance has never been solved.
'Now, years later, Tikka has returned home, to try to make sense of that strange moment in time. The summer that shaped her. The girls that she never forgot.
'Brilliantly observed, spiky, sharp, funny and unexpectedly endearing, The Van Apfel Girls are Gone is part mystery, part coming-of-age story – with a dark shimmering unexplained absence at its heart. ' (Publication summary)
Dedication:
For my parents.
And for Andy, of course.
Felicity McLean in Conversation with Chris Gordon
Chris Gordon
(interviewer),
2019
23469572
2019
single work
podcast
interview
'Readings events and programming manager Chris Gordon talks to author Felicity McLean about her quintessentially Australian coming-of-age story, The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone.' (Production summary)
'“We lost all three girls that summer. Let them slip away like the words of some half-remembered song …” It’s impossible to ignore Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Virgin Suicides when reading Felicity McLean’s debut novel, The Van Apfel Girls are Gone. The title itself is a nod to the trope of missing young women that so haunted the works of Joan Lindsay and Jeffrey Eugenides. Though cognisant of these influences, McLean’s book sings its own song.' (Introduction)
'From the ill-fated explorations of Leichhardt and Burke and Wills through to the Beaumont children, Azaria Chamberlain, and the backpacker murders in New South Wales, the history of Australia is peppered with tales and images of people going missing. And, as the First Peoples might well have been able to warn us, few of those stories turn out well.' (Introduction)
'Felicity McLean’s debut novel, The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone, has been described as Picnic at Hanging Rock for a new generation. In Joan Lindsay’s classic, the girls go missing from Appleyard College, while the titular surname in McLean’s book recalls the same fruit. Cordie, Hannah and Ruth Van Apfel are three sisters who seem to evaporate into the endless, suffocating summer of 1992.' (Introduction)
'Felicity McLean’s debut novel, The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone, has been described as Picnic at Hanging Rock for a new generation. In Joan Lindsay’s classic, the girls go missing from Appleyard College, while the titular surname in McLean’s book recalls the same fruit. Cordie, Hannah and Ruth Van Apfel are three sisters who seem to evaporate into the endless, suffocating summer of 1992.' (Introduction)
'“We lost all three girls that summer. Let them slip away like the words of some half-remembered song …” It’s impossible to ignore Picnic at Hanging Rock and The Virgin Suicides when reading Felicity McLean’s debut novel, The Van Apfel Girls are Gone. The title itself is a nod to the trope of missing young women that so haunted the works of Joan Lindsay and Jeffrey Eugenides. Though cognisant of these influences, McLean’s book sings its own song.' (Introduction)
'From the ill-fated explorations of Leichhardt and Burke and Wills through to the Beaumont children, Azaria Chamberlain, and the backpacker murders in New South Wales, the history of Australia is peppered with tales and images of people going missing. And, as the First Peoples might well have been able to warn us, few of those stories turn out well.' (Introduction)
Felicity McLean in Conversation with Chris Gordon
Chris Gordon
(interviewer),
2019
23469572
2019
single work
podcast
interview
'Readings events and programming manager Chris Gordon talks to author Felicity McLean about her quintessentially Australian coming-of-age story, The Van Apfel Girls Are Gone.' (Production summary)
