From the mid-1950s to the present day, Love is Strange charts the everyday life and eventual unravelling of an apparently ordinary, middle-class, suburban family. By means of a perfectly paced narrative, superb dialogue and a series of highly emotive monologues, Joseph Connolly takes us into the very souls of the four family members. Clifford is an eight-year-old short-trousered schoolboy who yearns to be an adult; Annette, his troubled elder sister, is 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 turmoil is to result in swift and devastating consequences for the family. 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. Love is Strange is destined to be one of the most celebrated novels of the autumn.