The ha-ha - Jennifer Dawson

This lost classic coming-of-age tale is a tragicomic portrait of one young woman's university breakdown and recovery, introduced by Daisy Johnson.

I wanted the knack of existing. I did not know the rules ... I wanted to tell them all about the animals, but would they understand?

A tea party at an Oxford college. Earnest undergraduates in floral dresses clink cups, discussing essay-crises, punting, summer balls. But to one student, they are grotesquely transformed: she is sitting among ominous armadillos with scaly shells, buzzing with black flies. Then, the laughter comes. As she is engulfed by mirthless hysterics, the Principal has no choice but to send her away.

Josephine's entrance into the world of other people wasn't what she imagined. Since her mother's death, reality seems a badly painted canvas, viewed through the wrong end of a telescope; she always thinks the wrong things, cowed by the brightness of existence. It is a relief to belong, for once, within the mental institution where she is taken. But eventually, she must reintegrate with society-and through a transformative encounter with a fellow patient, a return to real life seems possible ...

Winner of the 1961 James Tait Black Prize