The title-story in Jennifer Dawson’s sole published collection of short fiction is set in June, at Gledhull psychiatric hospital. It’s the institution’s 200th anniversary, and preparations are underway for a party in the hospital grounds; with staff, patients and locals all invited. Meanwhile a junior doctor strives to frustrate his senior colleague’s efforts to persuade a patient to consent to a lobotomy. It’s an abundantly-detailed slice-of-life that, among other things, is about mental health, institutionalization & sexism.

Dawson had ample first-hand knowledge of psychiatric care as both a patient and a professional. Her prize-winning debut novel The Ha-Ha had touched on similar themes, following a young woman’s breakdown and subsequent hospitalization. I first learned about Dawson via a reference book: leafing through a charity shop copy of The Oxford Companion to 20th Century Literature in English, my eye stopped at the short entry about her, arousing enough interest to send me off in search of her work.

Published in Hospital Wedding, Quartet, 1978. Available to read on a website devoted the author’s work, here. Picked by Stuart Heath. Stuart is a middle-aged IT Consultant based in South Wales with no literary ambitions.