Cold Comfort Farm (by Stella Gibbons)

I always thought Cold Comfort Farm was a mental institution--possibly based on long-ago movie trailers? But it turns out it isn't! The novel seems to be a satirical comedy of manners, and there are some postmodern elements too (in an introduction, the author announces her intentions to put stars next to the best passages, which are laughably overwrought descriptions of scenery).

Of course the book wouldn't work if it was 100% satire and you didn't care about the eccentric cast of characters at all, and you do. They're just this side of totally ridiculous, and you do root for them in spite of yourself! Now I need to see the movie....

A little later, as she sat peacefully sewing, Adam came in from the yard. He wore, as a protection from the rain, a hat which had lost--in who knows what dim hintermath of time--the usual attributes of shape, colour, and size, and those more subtle race-memory associations which identify hats as hats, and now resembled some obscure natural growth, some moss or sponge or fungus, which had attached itself to a host." (Page 80)