PJ Kavanagh’s classic memoir The Perfect Stranger tells of an uncertain young man seeking adventure and finding love. The author of One Day and Us first read it when he was a failing actor and bad bartender – it changed his life
Some books seem to come along at just the right moment, and become so entwined with memories of a particular time and place that you revisit them at your peril.
PJ Kavanagh’s fine memoir The Perfect Stranger was published to acclaim in 1966, the year I was born, and reissued in 1991. By then I was pursuing a career in acting, which is to say that I was working as a bartender, making some of the worst cappuccinos available in London at that time. Occasionally I would get an audition, or play a small role in a fringe production but while I was always enthusiastic there was a growing realisation, on my part and the audiences’, that I couldn’t really do it, and that I’d committed myself to a profession for which I lacked not just talent and charisma, but the most basic of skills. Moving, standing still – things like that.
Related: Review: Collected Poems by Patrick Kavanagh
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