**'I once decided to become friends with someone on the sole basis that she named O Caledonia as her favourite book'

Maggie O'Farrell

'A sparky, funny work of genius and one of the best least-known novels of the 20th Century'

Ali Smith**

'Funny, surprising, exquisitely written and brilliant on the smelly, absurd, harsh business of growing up'

David Nicholls

'A wonderful oddity - brief, vivid, eccentric, written with ferocious zest and black humour'

Penelope Lively

At the bottom of a great stone staircase, dressed in her mother's black lace evening dress, twisted in murderous death, lies Janet. So end the sixteen years of Janet's short life.

A life spent in a draughty Scottish castle, where roses will not grow, and a jackdaw decides to live in the doll's house.

A life peopled by prettier, smoother-haired siblings, a Nanny with a face like the North Sea and the peculiar, whisky-swigging Cousin Lila.

A life where Janet is perpetually misunderstood - and must turn from people, to animals, to books, to her own wild and wonderful imagination.

A W&N Essential with an introduction by Maggie O'Farrell