AustLit

'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)