Sunday, May 31, 2015

David Nicholls: the book that saved me

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

‘Sally is direct, optimistic and gregarious – a startling contrast to the rather sceptical and doomy
‘Sally is smart, direct, optimistic and gregarious – a startling contrast to the rather sceptical and doomy writer’ … PJ Kavanagh. Photograph: Carcanet
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.

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