The Golden Age
Joan London
(Author)
21,000+ Reviews
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Description
A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year: During WWII, a Jewish boy copes with a new homeland, a polio diagnosis--and falling in love for the first time.
Frank Gold's family, Hungarian Jews, have fled the perils of World War II for the safety of Australia, but not long after their arrival, thirteen-year-old Frank is diagnosed with polio. He is sent to a sprawling children's hospital called the Golden Age, where he meets Elsa, the most beautiful girl he has ever seen, a girl who radiates pure light.Soon, Frank and Elsa fall in love, fueling one another's rehabilitation, facing the perils of illness and adolescence hand in hand--and scandalizing the prudish staff of the Golden Age. Their parents, meanwhile, are coping with their own challenges. Elsa's mother must reconcile her hopes and dreams with the reality of her daughter's sickness. Frank's parents are isolated newcomers in a country they do not love and that does not seem to love them back. Frank's mother, a renowned pianist in Hungary, refuses to allow the western deserts of Australia to become her home. But her husband slowly begins to free himself from the past and integrate into a new society.
A winner of multiple literary awards in Australia, The Golden Age is a deeply moving novel about hardship and resilience that "graciously captures young love in a quiet and beautifully sculpted story that is easily devoured in one sitting" (Library Journal). "Poetic intensity suffuses the novel . . . Resisting easy sentimentality, [it] presents polio rehabilitation as a metaphor for postwar recovery." --The New Yorker"Beautiful."--The Dallas Morning News "The Golden Age is pretty much perfect."--Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Product Details
Price
$17.00
$15.81
Publisher
Europa Editions
Publish Date
August 16, 2016
Pages
224
Dimensions
5.3 X 0.8 X 8.2 inches | 0.65 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781609453329
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
Joan London is a bookseller and author living in Perth. She is the author of two short story collections, Sister Ships, which won The Age Book of the Year award, and Letter to Constantine, which won the Steele Rudd Award as well as the West Australian Premier's Award for Fiction, and three novels, Gilgamesh, The Good Parents, and The Golden Age.
Reviews
Praise for The Golden Age
"The Golden Age is pretty much perfect."
--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review "Her writing is cleareyed, generous-hearted, never sentimental...every character, however minor, comes to life in these pages. Like her fictional pianist, London is a virtuoso."
--Krikus Reviews (Starred) "Poetic intensity suffuses the novel...resisting easy sentimentality, [it] presents polio rehabilitation as a metaphor for postwar recovery."
--The New Yorker "Characterization is the novel's primary achievement. Readers will feel affection for Frank and the many secondary characters."
--Minneapolis Star Tribune "The Golden Age is a beautiful love story that insists upon celebrating the transcendent power of poetry and art over the destructive forces of fear, despair and xenophobia."
--The Dallas Morning News "For all its focus on exile and displacement, 'The Golden Age' is by no means an angry book. It is a quiet, elegiac story of love and renewal and liberation written in crisp prose..."
--Forward "The Golden Age serenely affirms the goodness in people and the divinity of the connections between them."
--Helen Elliott, The Syndney Morning Herald "The Golden Age is London's most accomplished and keenly felt work to date...her affection for her characters may be contagious."
--Geordie Williamson, The Australian "Fearless, graceful and deeply benevolent."
--Helen Garner, novelist "The multi-award-winning London graciously captures young love in a quiet and beautifully sculpted story that is easily devoured in one sitting."
--Library Journal "A brilliant display of life and change: the transition between war and peace, between love and permission, between terrible paralysis of various kinds and movement."
--Brenda Walker, The Monthly "The Golden Age carries the quiet assurance of a classic, which it will most certainly become. "
--Tegan Bennett Daylight, Sydney Review of Books
"London's writing is at its best when bringing to life the coming-of-age story between Frank and Elsa: their hopes and fears (and those of other polio-stricken children), their resolve, and their disappointments. The setting and place are rich and detailed, and Perth feels alive."
--Historical Novel Society
Praise for Joan London "[Gilgamesh] captures the romance of wanderlust like no other novel I have read."
--Maureen Freely, The Guardian "[The Good Parents] a dark and lovely work is both a novel of ideas and one of emotions...the mystery of enthrallment only deepens, irradiated by London's gorgeous prose."
--Roxana Robinson, The New York Times "London's prose is a seamlessly shifting blend of poetry, pathos, and humor."
--The Washington Post
"The Golden Age is pretty much perfect."
--Publishers Weekly, Starred Review "Her writing is cleareyed, generous-hearted, never sentimental...every character, however minor, comes to life in these pages. Like her fictional pianist, London is a virtuoso."
--Krikus Reviews (Starred) "Poetic intensity suffuses the novel...resisting easy sentimentality, [it] presents polio rehabilitation as a metaphor for postwar recovery."
--The New Yorker "Characterization is the novel's primary achievement. Readers will feel affection for Frank and the many secondary characters."
--Minneapolis Star Tribune "The Golden Age is a beautiful love story that insists upon celebrating the transcendent power of poetry and art over the destructive forces of fear, despair and xenophobia."
--The Dallas Morning News "For all its focus on exile and displacement, 'The Golden Age' is by no means an angry book. It is a quiet, elegiac story of love and renewal and liberation written in crisp prose..."
--Forward "The Golden Age serenely affirms the goodness in people and the divinity of the connections between them."
--Helen Elliott, The Syndney Morning Herald "The Golden Age is London's most accomplished and keenly felt work to date...her affection for her characters may be contagious."
--Geordie Williamson, The Australian "Fearless, graceful and deeply benevolent."
--Helen Garner, novelist "The multi-award-winning London graciously captures young love in a quiet and beautifully sculpted story that is easily devoured in one sitting."
--Library Journal "A brilliant display of life and change: the transition between war and peace, between love and permission, between terrible paralysis of various kinds and movement."
--Brenda Walker, The Monthly "The Golden Age carries the quiet assurance of a classic, which it will most certainly become. "
--Tegan Bennett Daylight, Sydney Review of Books
"London's writing is at its best when bringing to life the coming-of-age story between Frank and Elsa: their hopes and fears (and those of other polio-stricken children), their resolve, and their disappointments. The setting and place are rich and detailed, and Perth feels alive."
--Historical Novel Society
Praise for Joan London "[Gilgamesh] captures the romance of wanderlust like no other novel I have read."
--Maureen Freely, The Guardian "[The Good Parents] a dark and lovely work is both a novel of ideas and one of emotions...the mystery of enthrallment only deepens, irradiated by London's gorgeous prose."
--Roxana Robinson, The New York Times "London's prose is a seamlessly shifting blend of poetry, pathos, and humor."
--The Washington Post
