Rights Information

All

Reviews

‘The writing remains vivid and detailed, full of concise pen portraits … it’s hard to think of a memoir by a male author that describes the experience [of love] with as much honesty, passion and precision.’ David Nicholls, Guardian

‘To hear the truth so devastatingly and yet so joyfully encountered is rare in an age where autobiography has been flattened by the massed weight of political and public reminiscence. This autobiography, from its beginning to its bitter end, is a celebration of joy: joy in youth, in woman, in male camaraderie, in the struggle of art, in married love.’ Times Literary Supplement

‘[A] remarkable work of prose … It won the Richard Hillary Memorial Prize, for in reality it was a testimony to the absence of the one person who could help him work out the puzzle of life, his wife, Sally’ Independent

‘A joyous yet unsentimental account of Kavanagh’s early life and his few years with Sally. A story of love and tragic loss’ Guardian

‘Not sentimental nor self-pitying but vivid, humorous and bent upon describing a world in which the one person who had seemed to make sense of it had been lost.’ Telegraph

Author Biography

P. J. Kavanagh was a poet, writer, actor, lecturer and broadcaster, born in 1931. The Perfect Stranger was awarded the Richard Hillary Prize in 1966, and his novel A Song and Dance won the 1968 Guardian Fiction Prize. Among his many publications include Collected Poems, which won the Cholmondeley Award, and New Selected Poems, published in 2014. He died in August 2015, and is survived by his wife and two sons.