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Résumé
Résumé
When their teacher goes missing during an outing, eleven girls grapple with the aftermath in this haunting, exquisitely told psychological mystery.
The Vietnam War rages overseas, but back at home, in a year that begins with the hanging of one man and ends with the drowning of another, eleven schoolgirls embrace their own chilling history when their teacher abruptly goes missing on a field trip. Who was the mysterious poet they had met in the Garden? What actually happened in the seaside cave that day? And most important - who can they tell about it? In beautifully shimmering prose, Ursula Dubosarsky reveals how a single shared experience can alter the course of young lives forever. Part gripping thriller, part ethereal tale of innocence lost, The Golden Day is a poignant study of fear and friendship, and of what it takes to come of age with courage.
Critiques (7)
Critique du Bookseller Publisher
There¿s a dream-like quality to The Golden Day that grips you from the first page and never lets go. Ursula Duborsarsky writes in an introduction that she was inspired by Charles Blackman¿s ¿Floating Schoolgirl¿, ¿like an image from an urban Picnic at Hanging Rock¿; Henry Handel Richardson¿s The Getting of Wisdom; and stories of missing and murdered school children in the 1960s and 70s. Most of the events take place in Sydney in 1967. Eleven impressionable school girls head off on a secret excursion with their unconventional teacher--a Miss Brodie like character--and a mysterious young poet to explore hidden caves on the banks of the Sydney Harbour. Their teacher and the poet never return. What follows-- the waiting, the investigation and the whiff of scandal--is observed from the perspective of the young schoolgirls grappling with the seriousness of such an event. It is soon clear that things will never be the same; that they have reached a point in their lives where innocence is fading and childish games are being cast aside. This is a beautifully executed novel, from the luscious language to the little details of time and place. Duborsarsky has won many awards for her young adult novels including The Red Shoe and Theodora¿s Gift and she deserves to win many more for this one. Andrea Hanke is editor of Bookseller+Publisher
Critique de School Library Journal
Gr 7 Up-From its atmospheric beginning with the mention of a hanging, Dubosarsky's gently unsettling story (Candlewick, 2013) centers on 11 "little girls" who don hats and hold hands each time they line up to venture with their teacher to a nearby park. The Australian setting and Vietnam-era time frame are occasionally part of the story which concerns Cubby, Icara, Martine, Elizabeth, Tallest Elizabeth, Shortest Elizabeth, Elizabeth-with-the-plaits, and four classmates and what happens when poetry-loving Mrs. Renshaw disappears on one of the field trips. The general suspicion is that she may have been done in, perhaps by the park's caretaker, and just 10 days later, a memorial service is held. The writing has a ripe, dreamy quality, with rich descriptions of a man's "owlish" voice, the violet beauty of cigarette smoke, and a rowboat that bobs "like a shy pony." The ending (when the girls are seniors) leaves Mrs. Renshaw's fate less sure than ever. Although the girls are consistently described as little, and appear to be about 10, the teacher's disappearance and the overall literary style suggest an older audience. Narrator Kate Rudd does an excellent job distinguishing each of the young characters, and her adult voices accurately capture the commanding tones ("like a Roman emperor") ascribed to some of the teachers. The relationship-driven story line (it doesn't center on investigating Mrs. Renshaw's disappearance) and the somewhat languid writing style may not attract everyone, but Rudd's excellent vocal interpretation will engage listeners drawn to the story.-Maggie Knapp, Trinity Valley School, Fort Worth, TX (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Critique du Publishers Weekly
Blending mystery with coming-of-age themes, Dubosarsky's novel, set in 1967 at an Australian all-girls school, explores a class's response to the unexplained disappearance of their teacher. Miss Renshaw, lover of poetry and hater of capital punishment, takes her group of 11 "little girls" on a field trip to visit a public memorial garden and "think about death." There they meet an odd groundskeeper named Morgan, who leads them into a cave to see ancient Aboriginal paintings. The girls exit safely, but Miss Renshaw and Morgan do not reappear, and the girls return to school as the tide sweeps in. The incident, later reported to authorities, bonds the girls as each faces bewilderment, guilt, and grief when it becomes clear their teacher will not likely return. Dubosarsky (The Word Snoop) subtly shows the impact of the tragedy through fragments of conversations, observations, and memories, while expertly sketching a cast of vulnerable, inquisitive children and ridiculous authority figures. Laced with humor amid a steady feeling of dread, the atmospheric narrative chillingly evokes lurking forces capable of tarnishing even the most golden and innocent of days. Ages 12-up. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Critique de Horn Book
Spare and well written, this slim novel covers the days following a teacher's disappearance during a class outing. Eleven girls must make their way back to school where they are determined to keep their teacher's rendezvous with the local park's gardener a secret. The book's chilling atmosphere and mature tone are best suited for older readers. (c) Copyright 2014. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Critique de Kirkus
Eleven schoolgirls are haunted by their teacher's inexplicable disappearance during a field trip in this atmospheric mystery set in Vietnam Warera Sydney. Miss Renshaw's young students know their teacher is a bit eccentric. They also understand that their class's frequent poetry-writing excursions to a local garden are actually excuses for their teacher to see Morgan, a charismatic conscientious objector who is one of the gardeners. "It will be our little secret," Miss Renshaw says of their meetings with Morgan, but that secret becomes a burden when Miss Renshaw and Morgan vanish during an outing. Through precise, vivid descriptions, the third-person narrative evokes the contrast between the girls' cloistered school lives and the hard realities of the outside world. The students are "eleven schoolgirls in their round hats, with their socks falling down, hand in hand, like a chain of paper dolls"; meanwhile, soldiers are dying in Vietnam, and prisoners are being hanged at home. The mystery is less a whodunit and more a psychological study of the girls--especially anxious Cubby, whose friendship with sensible Icara is sorely tested by the affair--and invites comparisons to cult film classic Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975). Read this slender mystery for the meticulous prose and characterization, not for the plot. (Historical mystery. 12-18)]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Critique de Booklist
*Starred Review* The classic Australian film Picnic at Hanging Rock finds its literary equivalent in fellow Aussie Dubosarsky's dark, languid look into the inscrutable wells of secrecy to be found in little girls. In the shadow of the Vietnam War, 11 bored Australian schoolgirls are taken on a short field trip to the local gardens by their idealistic teacher. Together with the teacher's apparent paramour, the girls are led to a seaside cave wherein the two adults vanish forever. When the girls are repeatedly questioned about the disappearance, their own self-interest compels them to stay silent and senselessly guard the truth, until the keeping of the secret, not the secret itself, becomes the most important thing. In a stunning feat of perspective, Dubosarsky inhabits all 11 girls at once, snaking through a thousand small joys and triumphs and fears and petty grudges as they absorb life's bleakest truths as well as their own complicity in them: Their eyes were clear but their hearts were dishonest. Reminiscent of Janne Teller's Nothing (2010), this is a masterful look at children's numb surprise to the most unsavory of adult developments. Though it's not really a surprise, is it? They knew all along that the world was full of terrible things.--Kraus, Daniel Copyright 2010 Booklist
Critique du New York Review of Books
This unsettling and atmospheric novel unfolds in 1967 at a girls' school in Sydney. Once or twice a week, Miss Renshaw, a teacher with the charisma of Miss Jean Brodie, leads 11 of her students on a field trip to the Ena Thompson Memorial Gardens. While they write verses, Miss Renshaw flirts with the groundskeeper; she says he is a poet and a conscientious objector. But one morning, the two adults lead the girls into a seaside cave to see Aboriginal paintings. Spooked, the girls leave first and wait outside, but the tide is coming in, "so without making a particular decision," they "step back along the rocky edge of the world" and leave Miss Renshaw behind. She never returns. When they encounter her - or is it her ghost? - eight years later, her explanation of her disappearance is at once credible and at odds with the facts the girls have come to believe. Dubosarsky's spare prose explores the space between innocence and adulthood. Shaped by the girls' growing awareness of the world, her scenes are uneasy dreamscapes. Questions about responsibility, violence, sex, fear and death bloom beneath their placid surface. Unanswerable, they linger past the end of this slender but powerful volume.
