4⭐️ Something about books with women in mental hospitals just does it for me. What that says about me we’re just going to ignore…

Seeing that The Ha-Ha was compared to Sylvia Plath’s work instantly got me intrigued. The Bell Jar is one of my all time favorite books so I had high expectations going into this.

The Ha-Ha is about a young woman, Josephine, who’s currently in a mental hospital. We follow her as she tries to get back into “the real world”.

Josephine struggles with her purpose in life. She doesn’t want to be defined by her illness, by being “insane”. She wants to live, to experience joy.
Her journey to being “free” felt so realistic and understandable . Especially towards the end of the story I felt so connected to her and was rooting for her so much.

“Do you think I care whether the Doctors and hospital board decide I am sane or insane? I don’t care tuppence about nice quiet friends. Mine is not going to be that kind of existence. I want to live, to feel. I was born for something more than mere sanity. I was born for so much joy.”

The book was originally published in 1961 and the subjects that are being talked about within this book are so important, especially for that time.

I find Dawson’s prose at times chaotic and not as well developed/poetic as Plath’s. Which to me makes sense. Josephine to me is more a young woman whereas I see Esther as a more developed and wiser/older woman. The books are similar in storyline but different in writing style. The Ha-Ha focuses more on the experiences and The Bell Jar mostly reflects upon everything that has happened. That’s what reading it felt like to me at least.

I’m comparing both books because I both really enjoyed them and the similarities and differences are simply very interesting to me.

All in all, I just really enjoyed reading this book. It’s a short yet powerful read and one I highly recommend.

“‘I was born for something else. I was born for life, for joy, for . . .’ But it was not true. I stuck my teeth into the dusty, smooth bark of the tree. I ran my mouth up and down it searchingly, and cried and cried: ‘I am alive, aren’t I? Aren’t I, even if I don’t know the rules?’ I appealed, and cried more because there was no answer.”

Thank you, NetGalley and the publisher, for the arc

Thank you to Faber and Faber and NetGalley for the e-arc in exchange for an honest review.

The Ha-Ha follows Josephine, a 23 year old woman in the early 1960s, who has been diagnosed with schizophrenia and institutionalised. Very character-driven and hard to follow at times, as to be expected from the nature of the narrator.

An interesting modern classic being republished by Faber and Faber (available from 31st July 2025). For fans of ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest’, ‘The Bell Jar’, and ‘Girl, Interrupted’.

I think The Ha-Ha by Jennifer Dawson is a novel that fans of Janet Frame and Sylvia Plath will enjoy being able to have the experience of discovering.

Oh no, it's one of those books. The ones you enjoy, but can't for the life of you form a decent sentence to explain why.
Maybe it's the unusual voice of our main character.
Or the setting?
Or a look at mental health back in the day?
Whatever it was, I did enjoy it.