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.