Ursula Dubosarsky’s latest novel is portentous and haunting; with skilfully drawn characters and a narrative that blends reality and paranormal suggestions. In her notes, the author has named Charles Blackman’s painting Floating Schoolgirl as a source of inspiration. Certainly, Blackman’s ethereal and airborne creature has worked itself into The Golden Day, particularly in one of the girls, Cubby, whose hypersensitivity leads her to see and feel things that elude her peers. But the whole novel in fact is imbued with an otherworldly air that brings to mind the eeriness of Picnic at Hanging Rock. Here, too, the girls present a beguiling mix of innocence and knowingness. It takes the authorities a long time to learn about the very existence of Morgan because of the children’s unspoken agreement to protect their wayward teacher.

Death and the afterlife linger about with intent. Outside the cloistered school ground, the world is a menacing place; the novel opens with mention of Ronald Ryan’s hanging, and conscription and the Vietnam War are threaded into the narrative. The Golden Day successfully captures the tension between safety and chaos, certainty and calamity. On the brink of adolescence, the schoolgirls have one foot on protected soil, the other in an unknowable realm.