Love is Strange

Clifford is an eight-year-old short-trousered schoolboy who yearns to be an adult; Annette, his troubled elder sister, on the cusp of adolescence and coping badly with a convent education. Their mother Gillian, an archetypal fifties housewife, is devoted to Clifford, until life and events propel her elsewhere. Her husband Arthur is dictatorial and aloof, and in time his inner turmoils are to result in swift and devastating consequences for the family.

The eagerly-anticipated arrival of the family's first TV set is to provide the catalyst for a disaster which plunges the family into crisis. Clifford and Annette are spun into the 1960s in wholly surprising ways and in places as disparate as Swinging London's Carnaby Street and the hell of a punitive convent in rural Ireland.

Rich in the cultural detail of Britain throughout the second half of the twentieth century, Joseph Connolly's Love is Strange is a beautifully written and quite unforgettable novel of family life framed by a darkly English humour.