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Perfect Stranger
This book recounts the comedy, passion and the abrupt tragedy P. J. Kavanagh's early years. From a Butlin holiday camp to Switzerland and a battlefield in Korea to Barcelona, Kavanagh's life made little sense to him until he met 'the perfect stranger.' This work is a tender, funny, and unsentimental record of the uniqueness of human love.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1966
12 people are currently reading
463 people want to read
About the author
P.J. Kavanagh
36 books17 followersP. J. Kavanagh was a poet, writer, actor, broadcaster and columnist. Born in 1931, son of the radio comedy writer Ted Kavanagh, he went to a Benedictine school, served in the Korean war during national service, and worked for the British Council in Barcelona and Indonesia. He acted on stage and TV – his last appearance in an episode of Father Ted. The Perfect Stranger, awarded the Richard Hillary Memorial Prize in 1966, describes his early life. His columns for The Spectator and the Times Literary Supplement (he called them substitute poems) are collected in People and Places (1988) and A Kind of Journal (2003).
Poetry remained his major occupation. His New Selected Poems came out in 2014. Earlier collections include Presences (1987), An Enchantment (1991) and Something About (2004). His Collected Poems was given the Cholmondeley Award in 1992.
His novel A Song and Dance won the 1968 Guardian Fiction Prize. His other novels are A Happy Man, People and Weather and Only by Mistake, and for younger readers Scarf Jack and Rebel for Good. A travel-autobiography Finding Connections traces his Irish forebears in New Zealand. He edited G. K. Chesterton and Ivor Gurney, and the anthologies Voices in Ireland, The Oxford Book of Short Poems (with James Michie) and A Book of Consolations.
P. J. died in August 2015 in the Cotswold hills, where he had come to live with his wife and two sons over forty years before.
Poetry remained his major occupation. His New Selected Poems came out in 2014. Earlier collections include Presences (1987), An Enchantment (1991) and Something About (2004). His Collected Poems was given the Cholmondeley Award in 1992.
His novel A Song and Dance won the 1968 Guardian Fiction Prize. His other novels are A Happy Man, People and Weather and Only by Mistake, and for younger readers Scarf Jack and Rebel for Good. A travel-autobiography Finding Connections traces his Irish forebears in New Zealand. He edited G. K. Chesterton and Ivor Gurney, and the anthologies Voices in Ireland, The Oxford Book of Short Poems (with James Michie) and A Book of Consolations.
P. J. died in August 2015 in the Cotswold hills, where he had come to live with his wife and two sons over forty years before.
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Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
August 7, 2017
I received this book for free via Goodreads First Reads.
It is a hard book to rate and review. It is a memoir of the author's early life up until an event surrounding his first wife. I found it interesting that for what others have described as a love story, the woman he fell in love with wasn't even mentioned until two thirds of the way through the book.
His early life was interesting. He was also lucky with the opportunities he was handed. He provides a snapshot of post WW2 life in many countries and tells his views of them all. It was a pleasure to read for the most part yet never get completely enthralling.
It is understandable in hindsight why he glossed over the most important life event in the story but it did leave the ending feeling a little bit rushed. I feel the book has a historical importance but doesn't quite deserve to be called a modern classic.
3 stars. Worth the read.
It is a hard book to rate and review. It is a memoir of the author's early life up until an event surrounding his first wife. I found it interesting that for what others have described as a love story, the woman he fell in love with wasn't even mentioned until two thirds of the way through the book.
His early life was interesting. He was also lucky with the opportunities he was handed. He provides a snapshot of post WW2 life in many countries and tells his views of them all. It was a pleasure to read for the most part yet never get completely enthralling.
It is understandable in hindsight why he glossed over the most important life event in the story but it did leave the ending feeling a little bit rushed. I feel the book has a historical importance but doesn't quite deserve to be called a modern classic.
3 stars. Worth the read.
January 7, 2023
I picked this up in a secondhand shop, knowing very little about the writer. There was something so inviting in the opening pages (along the lines of, the world isn't short of love stories but I can find no other way to express what I want to say, so I'll write this anyway) that I took it home with me.
I read it over the course of about three days and was left reeling by the emotion of it. It's obviously the work of a poet as the writing perfectly conveyed his maturing from the displaced awkwardness of youth, to the assurity and emotional intelligence of an adult. I love his style; it had clarity without being sparse, intelligence without being arrogant, it was descriptive but never florid or romantic. I don't think I've done it justice here at all... I'd highly recommend reading it yourself.
I read it over the course of about three days and was left reeling by the emotion of it. It's obviously the work of a poet as the writing perfectly conveyed his maturing from the displaced awkwardness of youth, to the assurity and emotional intelligence of an adult. I love his style; it had clarity without being sparse, intelligence without being arrogant, it was descriptive but never florid or romantic. I don't think I've done it justice here at all... I'd highly recommend reading it yourself.
June 27, 2016
P J Kavanagh kept popping up as a minor character in other memoirs I read, and I've also read Rosamond Lehmann's The Swan in the Evening, her memoir of the death of her daughter Sally at the age of 24, and her subsequent psychic experiences. Then Slightly Foxed had a review of Kavanagh's own memoir of his early life, so I mooched it.
Kavanagh was a poet, so the prose is rich and full of lovely aphorisms. The part about his Korean war experience is written as a stream-of-consciousness short story, but there's also a lot of humour in his account of the class-ridden idiocies of army life, and of his various attempts to earn a living. Picking a piece at random, I loved his account of the two copy editors he discovered during a stint working in publishing, like something out of Gormenghast:
Throughout his experiences as a Butlin's redcoat, a journalist, broadcaster, educator with the British Council, he never really feels as if he fits in, is always searching for more. The last quarter of the book recounts his wonder at meeting and marrying Sally, his kindred spirit. A short, quick read.
Kavanagh was a poet, so the prose is rich and full of lovely aphorisms. The part about his Korean war experience is written as a stream-of-consciousness short story, but there's also a lot of humour in his account of the class-ridden idiocies of army life, and of his various attempts to earn a living. Picking a piece at random, I loved his account of the two copy editors he discovered during a stint working in publishing, like something out of Gormenghast:
... you found yourself wandering through these high, silent store-rooms, and up the side of one of the most deserted there ran a set of rickety library steps. At the top of these, in a kind of crow's-nest, lived two charming crow-like men. [...] They lived in a blizzard of typewritten paper, pecking into it with their noses, their clothes yellow with age, their eyes yellow, with the angry voracity of birds. They twittered to each other, darting indignantly about in their tiny space among half-finished crusts and scummy tea, passionately pointing out, pages flying everywhere, how this author had italicised a word on page twenty-seven and on page four hundred and six -- would you believe it? -- had spelled the very same word in roman letters!
Throughout his experiences as a Butlin's redcoat, a journalist, broadcaster, educator with the British Council, he never really feels as if he fits in, is always searching for more. The last quarter of the book recounts his wonder at meeting and marrying Sally, his kindred spirit. A short, quick read.
October 19, 2022
Not an easy read
I found a lot of the language was confusing. I read this on Kindle and used lookup feature on many words only to find no definition. Often sentence structure was both long and a bit odd. Once I accepted that I was not going to understand much (because I’m American? Slang words? Wartime? The era?) I decided to just let my eyes pass over the words. It became more enjoyable at point like water washing over me in a the tub. Just sort of immersed. But the book did not evoke any emotion or response from me other than a mild irritation and a wish for it to be over.
I found a lot of the language was confusing. I read this on Kindle and used lookup feature on many words only to find no definition. Often sentence structure was both long and a bit odd. Once I accepted that I was not going to understand much (because I’m American? Slang words? Wartime? The era?) I decided to just let my eyes pass over the words. It became more enjoyable at point like water washing over me in a the tub. Just sort of immersed. But the book did not evoke any emotion or response from me other than a mild irritation and a wish for it to be over.
October 24, 2019
Open, honest, and unsentimental. The book itself is constructed well. Usually don't care much but this one, independent of the content, is "built well." The cover image is silly.
May 27, 2021
I had to force myself to finish the book.
August 29, 2024
Please please read this book. I highly reccomend
June 22, 2015
"The early years of poet P.J. Kavanagh's life -- which took him from a Butlin's Holiday Camp to Switzerland and Paris, to a battlefield in Korea, to Oxford and Barcelona, and finally to Java -- made little sense to him, until 'something extraordinary happened': his meeting with Sally, 'the perfect stranger'.
This tender, funny and quite unsentimental record of the uniqueness of human love is as much a celebration of joy -- despite its abrupt and shocking conclusion -- as it is a poet's tribute of thanks.
~~back cover
This book "made little sense to me", at least until the end, which was the outcome I had anticipated all along, but reached in a way I least expected until the very end. Up until that time, it was just the self-absorbed agonizing of a bright undergraduate trying pompously to discover the meaning of life and the meaning of his life. We've all gone through it,haven't we? But of course the process -- accompanied by excess verbiage and vocabulary straight from the OED -- is boring as anything to anyone but the person wallowing through it. And that was the plot of the first two-thirds of the book. And last third was slightly redeeming, which is why I gave it two stars instead of only one.
This tender, funny and quite unsentimental record of the uniqueness of human love is as much a celebration of joy -- despite its abrupt and shocking conclusion -- as it is a poet's tribute of thanks.
~~back cover
This book "made little sense to me", at least until the end, which was the outcome I had anticipated all along, but reached in a way I least expected until the very end. Up until that time, it was just the self-absorbed agonizing of a bright undergraduate trying pompously to discover the meaning of life and the meaning of his life. We've all gone through it,haven't we? But of course the process -- accompanied by excess verbiage and vocabulary straight from the OED -- is boring as anything to anyone but the person wallowing through it. And that was the plot of the first two-thirds of the book. And last third was slightly redeeming, which is why I gave it two stars instead of only one.
June 11, 2016
I won this book through a Goodreads Giveaway.
Written in 1966, 'The Perfect Stranger' is a memoir of the early years of Kavanagh's life. I found this to be quite odd, but later realised that he had written this due to the death of his young wife, Sally. "This is my memorial to what happened between us...The rest of my life, any sense I can make of it, is a memorial to that." But, if only his memoir had more of his marriage to Sally in it, I may have found it actually interesting to read. Instead, he waffled on about his entire life, leaving the few mentions of Sally right towards the end.
Kavanagh talks his readers through the Blitz, his school years in Barnes and Switzerland, serving his country in Korea (where he was injured), college life , his marriage to Sally and then moving to Indonesia; and ultimately Sally's sudden death.
As much as I was disinterested in his life, I do feel that he wrote some poignant lines:
"My marriage was my reason for life. I had found what I needed, not an extension of myself (by any means) but my counterpart." You cannot help feel sorry for him at the end of the book.
Written in 1966, 'The Perfect Stranger' is a memoir of the early years of Kavanagh's life. I found this to be quite odd, but later realised that he had written this due to the death of his young wife, Sally. "This is my memorial to what happened between us...The rest of my life, any sense I can make of it, is a memorial to that." But, if only his memoir had more of his marriage to Sally in it, I may have found it actually interesting to read. Instead, he waffled on about his entire life, leaving the few mentions of Sally right towards the end.
Kavanagh talks his readers through the Blitz, his school years in Barnes and Switzerland, serving his country in Korea (where he was injured), college life , his marriage to Sally and then moving to Indonesia; and ultimately Sally's sudden death.
As much as I was disinterested in his life, I do feel that he wrote some poignant lines:
"My marriage was my reason for life. I had found what I needed, not an extension of myself (by any means) but my counterpart." You cannot help feel sorry for him at the end of the book.
May 13, 2016
I won this book via a Goodreads giveaway.
Prior to reading this book I had never heard of P. J. Kavanagh, but that doesn't take away from the book at all. It seems like he led quite an interesting young life.
There's a chapter about his time in Korea which is written as a stream of consciousness - at first it may seem hard to read, but it really does bring the situation alive to the reader. The most touching part is the final couple of chapters when he's talking of his wife. This was particularly close to my heart as I have some idea how he feels about having met his equal and the affect that such a relationship has on a person. This has happened to me, but it's not something people really talk about. People are very happy to gush about people being "lovely" or whatever, but no-one writes anything profound anymore.
Even if you haven't heard of Kavanagh, it's definitely worth reading if just for the analysis of relationships and an individuals place in the world - particularly now knowing it!
Prior to reading this book I had never heard of P. J. Kavanagh, but that doesn't take away from the book at all. It seems like he led quite an interesting young life.
There's a chapter about his time in Korea which is written as a stream of consciousness - at first it may seem hard to read, but it really does bring the situation alive to the reader. The most touching part is the final couple of chapters when he's talking of his wife. This was particularly close to my heart as I have some idea how he feels about having met his equal and the affect that such a relationship has on a person. This has happened to me, but it's not something people really talk about. People are very happy to gush about people being "lovely" or whatever, but no-one writes anything profound anymore.
Even if you haven't heard of Kavanagh, it's definitely worth reading if just for the analysis of relationships and an individuals place in the world - particularly now knowing it!
April 18, 2016
I received this book as part of Good Reads First Reads
Having read on the cover that this book was a memoir I was looking forward to deep tales of the person's life and the way it shaped him into becoming the man he turned into.
From following from the days of schooling through boarding school and then the army and onwards into a civilian life I found the tales to be a bit dull. Nothing in the book really grabbed my attention. Maybe because it was squashed into just over 200 pages .....but then again the book might have been worse if the stories were drawn out more - it may have been best to choose more specific moments and tell those stories properly.
Not a book I would read again although if you actually knew who PJ Kavanagh was then maybe you will enjoy this book
Having read on the cover that this book was a memoir I was looking forward to deep tales of the person's life and the way it shaped him into becoming the man he turned into.
From following from the days of schooling through boarding school and then the army and onwards into a civilian life I found the tales to be a bit dull. Nothing in the book really grabbed my attention. Maybe because it was squashed into just over 200 pages .....but then again the book might have been worse if the stories were drawn out more - it may have been best to choose more specific moments and tell those stories properly.
Not a book I would read again although if you actually knew who PJ Kavanagh was then maybe you will enjoy this book
June 15, 2016
I won this book through a good reads giveaway.
Firstly, this was not a book that I felt compelled to read, you know the kind, the real page turners that you cannot put down and before you realise it, you are still reading the darn thing at 1 am.
The story caught my attention and I really wanted to finish it but the authors style was not my usual bedtime reading. I found it challenging.... if I was laying on a beach in the middle of the day I could probably of got to grips with it more.
All in all this is a great memoir of the authors life which I did enjoy but cannot say much more than that. Thank you for the opportunity to read it.
Firstly, this was not a book that I felt compelled to read, you know the kind, the real page turners that you cannot put down and before you realise it, you are still reading the darn thing at 1 am.
The story caught my attention and I really wanted to finish it but the authors style was not my usual bedtime reading. I found it challenging.... if I was laying on a beach in the middle of the day I could probably of got to grips with it more.
All in all this is a great memoir of the authors life which I did enjoy but cannot say much more than that. Thank you for the opportunity to read it.
April 18, 2016
having received this book from Good Reads First Reads I was intrigued to try something a bit different than the books I usually read. How I wish I hadn't. Far from actually knowing who PJ Kavanagh actually was I found this to be a very rushed book about the start to finish of a life of a man who could have been any one. As the book went on I found the chapters never really got me enthralled nor excited to know what the man did next and although I finished the book to the last page it is not one I would care to read again. The stories from childhood about his life at school through to life in different countries for all sorts of reasons did not grab my attention
May 11, 2022
This book is highly overrated. It is a simple memoir and not overly groundbreaking or emotive; not a transformative work of literature or a revolution of writing as declared by some of my favourite writers.
I bought this assuming it was going to slip into the vacant slot of my trinity of writing- on writing- Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Woolf’s Room of One’s Own. I feel I commuted act of blasphemy in that assumption.
However I did learn one valuable point from it; the correlation between increasing good luck as to how one looks/sounds. The old boys make luck for a white floppy haired male with the right English accent!
I bought this assuming it was going to slip into the vacant slot of my trinity of writing- on writing- Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Woolf’s Room of One’s Own. I feel I commuted act of blasphemy in that assumption.
However I did learn one valuable point from it; the correlation between increasing good luck as to how one looks/sounds. The old boys make luck for a white floppy haired male with the right English accent!
July 28, 2015
I was told that this book is a 'must' for anybody who grew up in the sixties - a book, like On The Road, that is 'cult' for that era. I was disappointed. The actual story, the love story that is described on the cover, doesn't really start until the last quarter of the book. It's a memoir, a genre which I like, but it doesn't do a lot for me.
September 10, 2016
l received The Perfect Stranger by P.J. Kavanagh for free through Goodreads Firstreads giveaway.
l think this book is a love it or hate it book, there seems to be no middle ground. l ask myself why did l not enjoy it? lt was a rambling tale in 'bitty' episodes. l could not relate to or empathise with any characters. ln a word, l was . . . . bored. Sorry.
l think this book is a love it or hate it book, there seems to be no middle ground. l ask myself why did l not enjoy it? lt was a rambling tale in 'bitty' episodes. l could not relate to or empathise with any characters. ln a word, l was . . . . bored. Sorry.
May 9, 2016
This was a Goodreads Giveaway. I loved this book - particularly like true stories and this was a true love story - sometimes happy and sometimes sad - but I really felt as though I was PJK as he went through all the ups and downs of his life. A very enjoyable read.
August 9, 2016
"The Perfect Stranger" is an interesting and well written book. It holds attention almost all the way through, but I felt that it was just too detailed towards the end, but I suppose this was necessary in view of the final pages. It is a book that should be widely read. Recommended
Read
January 2, 2016an incredibly sweet book, with an ending that is the literary equivalent of a baseball bat to the balls.
May 31, 2016
I won this book on a goodread giveaway. A quaint english account of a young males exploits
during and just after war time. Likeable characters and a good wholesome read Many Thanks
during and just after war time. Likeable characters and a good wholesome read Many Thanks
July 9, 2018
A beautiful memorial - haunting - true - the love you dream of -
Want to read
December 23, 2010bargain = 1 of 29 books for $5.
April 10, 2012
Sad and lovely.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews