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The Golden Age
This is a story of resilience, the irrepressible, enduring nature of love, and the fragility of life. From one of Australia's most loved novelists.
He felt like a pirate landing on an island of little maimed animals. A great wave had swept them up and dumped them here. All of them, like him, stranded, wanting to go home. It is 1954 and thirteen-year-old Frank Gold, refugee from wartime Hungary, is learning to walk again after contracting polio in Australia.
At the Golden Age Children's Polio Convalescent Hospital in Perth, he sees Elsa, a fellow-patient, and they form a forbidden, passionate bond. The Golden Age becomes the little world that reflects the larger one, where everything occurs, love and desire, music, death, and poetry. Where children must learn that they are alone, even within their families.
Written in Joan London's customary clear-eyed prose, The Golden Age evokes a time past and a yearning for deep connection. It is a rare and precious gem of a book from one of Australia's finest novelists.
He felt like a pirate landing on an island of little maimed animals. A great wave had swept them up and dumped them here. All of them, like him, stranded, wanting to go home. It is 1954 and thirteen-year-old Frank Gold, refugee from wartime Hungary, is learning to walk again after contracting polio in Australia.
At the Golden Age Children's Polio Convalescent Hospital in Perth, he sees Elsa, a fellow-patient, and they form a forbidden, passionate bond. The Golden Age becomes the little world that reflects the larger one, where everything occurs, love and desire, music, death, and poetry. Where children must learn that they are alone, even within their families.
Written in Joan London's customary clear-eyed prose, The Golden Age evokes a time past and a yearning for deep connection. It is a rare and precious gem of a book from one of Australia's finest novelists.
256 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 2014
212 people are currently reading
2877 people want to read
About the author
Joan London
26 books113 followersJoan London is an Australian author of short stories, screenplays and novels.
She graduated from the University of Western Australia having studied English and French, has taught English as a second language and is a bookseller.
She lives in Fremantle, Western Australia, with her husband Geoff.
Joan London was the youngest of four sisters.
A baby boomer, she and her husband, Geoff, did the mandatory trip across Asia and were very attracted to the "internal revolution" that involved dropping out of society and making a new utopia in the country.
"We were very idealistic about it and had several attempts at it. Once we were with a couple who broke up, so that all collapsed. Another time we bought some land with a group of people, but we all fell out about what we wanted to do. We never built more than a shed on the land, then we had to sell it."
For about a year, they lived in a little cottage in the country, pursuing the simple life. Their first child was born there, and Geoff, an architect, became a trainee potter.
"But we hated it! You have to have practical skills, the right nature, a lot of resources. You have to really enjoy growing things and be able to fix things. All the skills I haven't got - and neither has my husband. We had to find out the hard way."
[The Age - 5 April 2008]
She graduated from the University of Western Australia having studied English and French, has taught English as a second language and is a bookseller.
She lives in Fremantle, Western Australia, with her husband Geoff.
Joan London was the youngest of four sisters.
A baby boomer, she and her husband, Geoff, did the mandatory trip across Asia and were very attracted to the "internal revolution" that involved dropping out of society and making a new utopia in the country.
"We were very idealistic about it and had several attempts at it. Once we were with a couple who broke up, so that all collapsed. Another time we bought some land with a group of people, but we all fell out about what we wanted to do. We never built more than a shed on the land, then we had to sell it."
For about a year, they lived in a little cottage in the country, pursuing the simple life. Their first child was born there, and Geoff, an architect, became a trainee potter.
"But we hated it! You have to have practical skills, the right nature, a lot of resources. You have to really enjoy growing things and be able to fix things. All the skills I haven't got - and neither has my husband. We had to find out the hard way."
[The Age - 5 April 2008]
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 430 reviews
September 15, 2024
The building that once housed The Golden Age Children’s Polio Convalescent Home in Western Australia no longer stands. Originally a public house built in the early years of the twentieth century, it was converted into a hospice in 1949 and later flattened to make way for a new freeway from the city centre to the north in Perth’s relentless push towards a modern capital city.
And this beautiful quiet novel captures an almost equally forgotten time and place in its exploration of impairment and repair during one of the city’s major polio epidemics in 1954. Poetry and the awakening of the poet’s voice, first love, displacement, music, war, family relationships form its centre and resonate far beyond the closing pages.
I first read ‘The Golden Age’ in 2015 but don’t recall it moving me then as it has this time. Loss and hope are rarely expressed so eloquently in the modern novel.
And this beautiful quiet novel captures an almost equally forgotten time and place in its exploration of impairment and repair during one of the city’s major polio epidemics in 1954. Poetry and the awakening of the poet’s voice, first love, displacement, music, war, family relationships form its centre and resonate far beyond the closing pages.
I first read ‘The Golden Age’ in 2015 but don’t recall it moving me then as it has this time. Loss and hope are rarely expressed so eloquently in the modern novel.
August 5, 2016
If someone were to have told me that The Golden Age was written in 1954 – the time of its setting – I would have believed them. The book has the tone of a classic, with the potential of rediscovery upon future readings.
There are no bells and whistles here. The writing is spare but powerful, carefully calibrated to reveal but not lead the reader. I often separate books into warm (those that touch the heart) and cool (those that touch the brain). On that continuum, I’d place this book at “cool-ish”, not at all manipulative despite its theme.
And what IS the theme? In a word, it’s displacement. The Golden Age refers to an actual polio children’s convalescent home in Australia that existed between 1949-1959. Frank Gold (no coincidence, I think, that his name is similar to the home) is sent there just as he stands on the brink of maturity (he is 13 years old). There he meets Elsa, also on the cusp of adulthood, and according to the book jacket, they fall in love.
Still, the love story is not truly the focal point of the book. Frank considers this: “Every country had its rules. He had to learn them. How long would he be allowed to stay here? Was this the country where he could finally feel at home?” Frank and his family have already been displaced; they are Hungarian Jews who were forced to leave their homeland during the war and in Australia, view themselves as strangers in a strange land. Polio is a metaphor for this displacement and forces Frank, once again, to learn to adjust in a home with its own history and rules.
Frank’s illness and recovery are aligned, in ways, with that of his parents, Meyer and Ida. Ida was an esteemed pianist in Hungary and has not performed for a while; one might say she is dealing with her own form of paralysis. Meyer, who is more optimistic, must come to the realization that his new city “is its own place. It is not like anywhere else.” The entire family moves towards acceptance of a new reality.
There are many secondary characters here as well, and none of them receive short shrift. This is a gentle book and it requires careful reading to fully glean all its nuances. Consider it a parlor study of the progression from paralysis to movement.
There are no bells and whistles here. The writing is spare but powerful, carefully calibrated to reveal but not lead the reader. I often separate books into warm (those that touch the heart) and cool (those that touch the brain). On that continuum, I’d place this book at “cool-ish”, not at all manipulative despite its theme.
And what IS the theme? In a word, it’s displacement. The Golden Age refers to an actual polio children’s convalescent home in Australia that existed between 1949-1959. Frank Gold (no coincidence, I think, that his name is similar to the home) is sent there just as he stands on the brink of maturity (he is 13 years old). There he meets Elsa, also on the cusp of adulthood, and according to the book jacket, they fall in love.
Still, the love story is not truly the focal point of the book. Frank considers this: “Every country had its rules. He had to learn them. How long would he be allowed to stay here? Was this the country where he could finally feel at home?” Frank and his family have already been displaced; they are Hungarian Jews who were forced to leave their homeland during the war and in Australia, view themselves as strangers in a strange land. Polio is a metaphor for this displacement and forces Frank, once again, to learn to adjust in a home with its own history and rules.
Frank’s illness and recovery are aligned, in ways, with that of his parents, Meyer and Ida. Ida was an esteemed pianist in Hungary and has not performed for a while; one might say she is dealing with her own form of paralysis. Meyer, who is more optimistic, must come to the realization that his new city “is its own place. It is not like anywhere else.” The entire family moves towards acceptance of a new reality.
There are many secondary characters here as well, and none of them receive short shrift. This is a gentle book and it requires careful reading to fully glean all its nuances. Consider it a parlor study of the progression from paralysis to movement.
November 12, 2016
At the ferry jetty he turned right into Barrack Street, walked up past the Supreme Court Gardens, across St Georges Terrace. This was the city they’d been offered, and had accepted. They were safe here, but even now, at rush hour, the wide streets felt empty. That was the bargain. He’d left his city and would never return.
How short-lived gratitude was!
It was like this. Budapest was the glamorous love of his life who had betrayed him. Perth was a flat-faced, wide-hipped country girl whom he’d been forced to take as a wife. Only time would tell if one day he would reach across and take her hand…
He had a suspicion that never again would he feel at home as he once had. Never again on this earth. And another suspicion: that to love a place, to imagine yourself belonging to it, was a lie, a fiction. It was vanity.
Especially for a Jew.
If he didn’t know better about human nature – his education had been swift and irrevocable – he would say that there was an innocence about this city. Nobody here could imagine the waters of the Swan running red. The Causeway bombed, tanks rolling up St Georges Terrace. Block after block of empty buildings, blackened and broken like ruined teeth. Shots ringing out. The hunted running through Kings Park. Bodies piled ten high on the steps of Parliament House… In an eye flash he saw his brother Janos pressed between other bodies, stacked up like firewood, against the wall of a slaughterhouse. Janos was no longer and yet, as Meyer stood there staring, for one moment, suddenly, vividly, Janos…
(p.92)
How short-lived gratitude was!
It was like this. Budapest was the glamorous love of his life who had betrayed him. Perth was a flat-faced, wide-hipped country girl whom he’d been forced to take as a wife. Only time would tell if one day he would reach across and take her hand…
He had a suspicion that never again would he feel at home as he once had. Never again on this earth. And another suspicion: that to love a place, to imagine yourself belonging to it, was a lie, a fiction. It was vanity.
Especially for a Jew.
If he didn’t know better about human nature – his education had been swift and irrevocable – he would say that there was an innocence about this city. Nobody here could imagine the waters of the Swan running red. The Causeway bombed, tanks rolling up St Georges Terrace. Block after block of empty buildings, blackened and broken like ruined teeth. Shots ringing out. The hunted running through Kings Park. Bodies piled ten high on the steps of Parliament House… In an eye flash he saw his brother Janos pressed between other bodies, stacked up like firewood, against the wall of a slaughterhouse. Janos was no longer and yet, as Meyer stood there staring, for one moment, suddenly, vividly, Janos…
(p.92)
March 1, 2015
The second last book in my quest to read the 2015 Stella Prize longlist. I wasn't hugely taken by London's previous novel, Gilgamesh, so I wasn't super excited to tackle this. Somewhat surprisingly, I loved it - a gorgeously written evocation of a 1950s children's polio rehabilitation centre in Perth, The Golden Age has a lot to say about love, family, independence and coming to terms with the hand life deals you. The supporting characters are rich and memorable (Frank's parents in particular), while the two teenagers at the centre of the plot feel a bit idealised. The writing is luminous and the sense of time and place effortlessly conveyed.
(The cover of the book is ludicrous though - there's no character who fits the demographic of the dude on the cover, and no train trips in the whole book. A bafflingly lazy bit of production.)
(The cover of the book is ludicrous though - there's no character who fits the demographic of the dude on the cover, and no train trips in the whole book. A bafflingly lazy bit of production.)
September 11, 2014
Frank Gold, along with parents Ida and Meyer arrived from Hungary as refugees fleeing a war torn country. Their original hope was to go to America but an earlier ship was leaving for Australia from Vienna where they were waiting. They found it hard to settle into their new country, Ida especially – New Australians and their funny accents were the butt of many jokes. In 1954 when Frank contracted polio and was placed into isolation, their shock and devastation was great.
When Frank was transferred to the Golden Age Children’s Polio Convalescent Hospital in Perth, he felt that he definitely didn’t belong. For a start he was one of the oldest children there at almost thirteen – many more were babies; but he felt as if they had all been shut away to be forgotten just because of their illness. Frank had a curious nature – his investigation of the hospital as he wheeled himself around in his wheelchair led him to the ward where the iron lungs were housed. It was here he met a young man by the name of Sullivan Backhouse who was to have a huge influence on his life.
Elsa Briggs was from a large family – the eldest of her siblings, at twelve years of age she was a bright and active child. When the debilitating disease that was polio struck Elsa, it was with force. She was also at the Golden Age Hospital and when Frank saw her first he was mesmerised. A burgeoning and secret friendship between the two developed, slowly and cautiously – Elsa brightened Frank’s life, and Elsa found herself missing him when he wasn’t in the room…
The Golden Age is a beautiful book – melancholy and sad, uplifting and hopeful, the word pictures are painted with a passion that shows the fragility of life, the deep impressions of a childhood love and the strength of coping with what life sometimes throws at you. This is my first read by Aussie author Joan London, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Highly recommended.
When Frank was transferred to the Golden Age Children’s Polio Convalescent Hospital in Perth, he felt that he definitely didn’t belong. For a start he was one of the oldest children there at almost thirteen – many more were babies; but he felt as if they had all been shut away to be forgotten just because of their illness. Frank had a curious nature – his investigation of the hospital as he wheeled himself around in his wheelchair led him to the ward where the iron lungs were housed. It was here he met a young man by the name of Sullivan Backhouse who was to have a huge influence on his life.
Elsa Briggs was from a large family – the eldest of her siblings, at twelve years of age she was a bright and active child. When the debilitating disease that was polio struck Elsa, it was with force. She was also at the Golden Age Hospital and when Frank saw her first he was mesmerised. A burgeoning and secret friendship between the two developed, slowly and cautiously – Elsa brightened Frank’s life, and Elsa found herself missing him when he wasn’t in the room…
The Golden Age is a beautiful book – melancholy and sad, uplifting and hopeful, the word pictures are painted with a passion that shows the fragility of life, the deep impressions of a childhood love and the strength of coping with what life sometimes throws at you. This is my first read by Aussie author Joan London, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Highly recommended.
April 6, 2023
Another completely pointless, bland book. Literary fiction will never stop being a mysterious puzzle to me.
Here's a book that goes into minute detail about EVERY. SINGLE. CHARACTER'S. APPEARANCE. Learn about freckles, stretchmarks, tans, scars, shapes, sizes, sags, clothing, adornments, ETC. Wow. Sheer literary brilliance obviously. Forgive me for being the dullard that spent most of this book thinking, 'but what is the point??!'
There's also something about two kids, in a hospital for polio patients, who fall in love. Apparently. Considering how much detail went into describing how people look, there was very sparse detail of anything else, including any kind of meaningful story.
The kid, Frank, considers himself a poet (and of course at 13/14 everything he thinks, feels and believes is absolutely true and shall remain so even as he grows, because no one ever develops and grows from who they were as a child) so there are a few random lines thrown in here and there, but nothing ever really amounts from it? It's important to him, but it still doesn't seem like a particularly strong part of the story?
Also a strange not-affair with Frank's father which somehow relates to his feelings towards Australia, and his wife.
I think this book must be so steeped in metaphor that it completely forgets to tell an actual story. There's really just no reason to read it. There's a little insight into polio in the early 50s but even that is kind of limited.
Also, I'm still mad that the author inserted a throwaway line about boys reading Spider-Man comics when Spidey didn't hit the scene til a decade later. The devil is in the details, my friends.
So I guess if you like seeing all the characters vividly but having to untangle what they're actually doing, this will be a winner for you. There are some feels here about immigration, and isolation, and weird, twisted love, but it's too 'literary' for my tastes, I'm afraid.
I'd rather rot my braincells with things that are actually fun.
Here's a book that goes into minute detail about EVERY. SINGLE. CHARACTER'S. APPEARANCE. Learn about freckles, stretchmarks, tans, scars, shapes, sizes, sags, clothing, adornments, ETC. Wow. Sheer literary brilliance obviously. Forgive me for being the dullard that spent most of this book thinking, 'but what is the point??!'
There's also something about two kids, in a hospital for polio patients, who fall in love. Apparently. Considering how much detail went into describing how people look, there was very sparse detail of anything else, including any kind of meaningful story.
The kid, Frank, considers himself a poet (and of course at 13/14 everything he thinks, feels and believes is absolutely true and shall remain so even as he grows, because no one ever develops and grows from who they were as a child) so there are a few random lines thrown in here and there, but nothing ever really amounts from it? It's important to him, but it still doesn't seem like a particularly strong part of the story?
Also a strange not-affair with Frank's father which somehow relates to his feelings towards Australia, and his wife.
I think this book must be so steeped in metaphor that it completely forgets to tell an actual story. There's really just no reason to read it. There's a little insight into polio in the early 50s but even that is kind of limited.
Also, I'm still mad that the author inserted a throwaway line about boys reading Spider-Man comics when Spidey didn't hit the scene til a decade later. The devil is in the details, my friends.
So I guess if you like seeing all the characters vividly but having to untangle what they're actually doing, this will be a winner for you. There are some feels here about immigration, and isolation, and weird, twisted love, but it's too 'literary' for my tastes, I'm afraid.
I'd rather rot my braincells with things that are actually fun.
May 12, 2015
‘Once you get used to your condition, he said, your imagination becomes free again.’
The Golden Age is set in a convalescent home for children who were victims of poliomyelitis in Perth, Western Australia in the early 1950s. (The Golden Age Convalescent Home for Polio Children which operated in Leederville from 1949 to 1959, really existed. It was once a hotel, and has since been demolished.) This novel tells the story of a twelve year boy, Frank Gold. Frank and his parents Ida and Meyer were Hungarian refugees who had wanted to go to America but had reluctantly come to Australia. Meyer has adapted, Ida has not. And when Frank contracts polio after they settle in Perth, she has even less reason to be happy. Ida was once a concert pianist, but once Frank became ill she no longer played.
‘Once you have tasted meaninglessness, you lose any idea of reward, or punishment, or conventional virtue.’
Frank has been moved from the adult polio hospital (where he was the youngest patient) to The Golden Age (where he is the oldest). At first he is not happy about this move, coming soon after the death of Sullivan (aged 18) whom he’d met in the iron lung ward. Sullivan had composed poetry, which Frank transcribed for him, and the two of them had become close.
At The Golden Age, Frank explores the corridors in his wheelchair, trying to catch a glimpse of Elsa, the only other child of his age. The two become friends. The reader learns more about each of them, about Elsa’s strength and sense of self, about Frank’s intense desire to belong and to write poetry. There’s an encounter which changes both their lives, and quite soon after the story moves (abruptly) to the present day and we learn a little about the intervening years of their lives.
The story is told in the third-person, and moves through a number of different points of view. I enjoyed this, as it gave an opportunity to see events through the lives of some of the other characters including Frank’s father, Elsa’s mother and Sister Olive Penny who is in charge at The Golden Age. Through Frank and Elsa, Ms London describes the onset, impact and isolation caused by polio. Through their parents (particularly Elsa’s mother and Frank’s parents) she describes the post-war world in Australia, the impacts of difference, disease and war. It’s a rich world, shaped but not destroyed by events. I read this novel accompanied by memories of my father, who contracted polio as a young man (in Tasmania) during this epidemic.
This is the kind of story that stays with you, long after you’ve finished reading it.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
The Golden Age is set in a convalescent home for children who were victims of poliomyelitis in Perth, Western Australia in the early 1950s. (The Golden Age Convalescent Home for Polio Children which operated in Leederville from 1949 to 1959, really existed. It was once a hotel, and has since been demolished.) This novel tells the story of a twelve year boy, Frank Gold. Frank and his parents Ida and Meyer were Hungarian refugees who had wanted to go to America but had reluctantly come to Australia. Meyer has adapted, Ida has not. And when Frank contracts polio after they settle in Perth, she has even less reason to be happy. Ida was once a concert pianist, but once Frank became ill she no longer played.
‘Once you have tasted meaninglessness, you lose any idea of reward, or punishment, or conventional virtue.’
Frank has been moved from the adult polio hospital (where he was the youngest patient) to The Golden Age (where he is the oldest). At first he is not happy about this move, coming soon after the death of Sullivan (aged 18) whom he’d met in the iron lung ward. Sullivan had composed poetry, which Frank transcribed for him, and the two of them had become close.
At The Golden Age, Frank explores the corridors in his wheelchair, trying to catch a glimpse of Elsa, the only other child of his age. The two become friends. The reader learns more about each of them, about Elsa’s strength and sense of self, about Frank’s intense desire to belong and to write poetry. There’s an encounter which changes both their lives, and quite soon after the story moves (abruptly) to the present day and we learn a little about the intervening years of their lives.
The story is told in the third-person, and moves through a number of different points of view. I enjoyed this, as it gave an opportunity to see events through the lives of some of the other characters including Frank’s father, Elsa’s mother and Sister Olive Penny who is in charge at The Golden Age. Through Frank and Elsa, Ms London describes the onset, impact and isolation caused by polio. Through their parents (particularly Elsa’s mother and Frank’s parents) she describes the post-war world in Australia, the impacts of difference, disease and war. It’s a rich world, shaped but not destroyed by events. I read this novel accompanied by memories of my father, who contracted polio as a young man (in Tasmania) during this epidemic.
This is the kind of story that stays with you, long after you’ve finished reading it.
Jennifer Cameron-Smith
June 27, 2015
What struck me most about this book is that although it is dealing with children struck down by the terrible polio epidemic of the 1950s it is a quiet and joyous story. For Frank Gold, recently arrived in Australia from post WWII Hungary and on the cusp of adolescence it should be a horrific time in his life. But Frank is resilient and resourceful and relishes the sudden independence from his parents and the cares of the world. "The Golden Age", the children's convalescent hospital of the title as described by London was indeed a sanctuary for the children where they could be treated as normal children and be shielded from the stares and derision of the world until they were strong enough to go back to it.
It is while in hospital during the acute phase of his polio that Frank discovers the beauty of poetry from an older boy, Sullivan imprisoned in an iron lung and from then on he constantly writes down lines that come to him. When he is later moved to the the Golden Age he sees a girl around his own age, Elsa, and falls in love.
"Her light golden-brown hair was pulled straight back into a single-plait. Little gold wisps escaped and caught the low beams of sun around her forehead. Her skin was pale. She looked like a drawing done with a fine lead pencil. He noted the straightness of her nose, her delicate, grave mouth, the clear curve of her jawline, the length of her neck from the bottom of her earlobe to the hollow of her throat.There was a shadow between her eye and cheekbone. An aristocrat."
Elsa is from a different background to Frank. A solid middle class Australian existence in a big house near the sea, of tennis lessons and endless golden days riding her bike. They form a strong bond and although we never get a strong sense of her personality, she becomes Frank's muse and soul mate.
The prose is simple and beautiful. The themes of displacement and nostalgia (from childhood, from war torn Europe) are woven strongly through those of love and relationships. Through Frank's year long recuperation, his parents finally start to accept their new life in Perth and although it will never be the same as Budapest before the war there is hope for a good future together.4.5★
December 20, 2017
Golden Age è il nome di un sanatorio, realmente esistito, in Australia negli anni 50. Vi sono ricoverati i bambini vittime della polio. È un microcosmo: di dolore, ma anche di speranza, anche di conoscenza di sè, anche di amore.
A Golden Age il tredicenne Frank, aspirante poeta, si innamora di Elsa, radiosa nuvola bionda su esili gambe offese. Intorno a loro, a quel nucleo di possente luminosa verità, si muovono diversi personaggi, dai genitori alle infermiere.
Frank è figlio di migranti : profughi ungheresi scampati alla deportazione. Motivo collaterale è il confronto fra civiltà e mentalità differenti: quella mitteleuropea, per certi versi più evoluta, e quella angloaustraliana, che riconosce la paternità dei conquistatori inglesi (puritani) e ne venera la corona.
Il percorso di emancipazione di Frank e Elsa, simbolo di una generazione ferita, è anche un viaggio di formazione verso la riconquista della propria vita, la scoperta della propria vocazione alla quale, nonostante tutto, non si può e non si deve rinunciare.
A Golden Age il tredicenne Frank, aspirante poeta, si innamora di Elsa, radiosa nuvola bionda su esili gambe offese. Intorno a loro, a quel nucleo di possente luminosa verità, si muovono diversi personaggi, dai genitori alle infermiere.
Frank è figlio di migranti : profughi ungheresi scampati alla deportazione. Motivo collaterale è il confronto fra civiltà e mentalità differenti: quella mitteleuropea, per certi versi più evoluta, e quella angloaustraliana, che riconosce la paternità dei conquistatori inglesi (puritani) e ne venera la corona.
Il percorso di emancipazione di Frank e Elsa, simbolo di una generazione ferita, è anche un viaggio di formazione verso la riconquista della propria vita, la scoperta della propria vocazione alla quale, nonostante tutto, non si può e non si deve rinunciare.
March 1, 2015
Meh... I'm abandoning this book half-way through as it wasn't holding my interest and was a bit blah for me. I kept going long after I wanted to stop as the reviews have been glowing. I began to think is there something wrong with me, am I not getting something here?? But it has not put me off reading any of her other books.
March 20, 2020
(3.5) The Golden Age was a real children’s polio hospital in Western Australia, but London has peopled it with her own fictional cast. In 1953–4, Frank Gold and Elsa Briggs, polio patients aged 12 going on 13, fall in love in the most improbable of circumstances. “The backs of their hands brushed as they walked side by side on their crutches. Their bloodstreams recharged by exercise and fresh air, they experienced a fiery burst of pleasure.”
Frank is much the more vibrant character thanks to his family’s wartime past in Hungary and his budding vocation as a poet, which was spurred on by his friendship with Sullivan, a fellow inmate at his previous rehabilitation center. The narrative spends time with nurses, parents and other patients but keeps coming back to Frank and Elsa. But Chapter 7, with Frank and his mother Ida still back in Budapest, was my favorite.
I was reminded of Tracy Farr’s work, especially the look back from decades later. A strong premise and some great lines, but for me there was something slightly lacking in the execution. (From the Wellcome Book Prize 2017 longlist.)
Favorite lines:
“During the long days in hospital, the sky passing across the high window in the Isolation Ward had become Elsa’s backyard, her freedom, her picture show. Watched, the sky slowed itself to a silent, endless semaphore of shapes and colours, as if it were signalling a message.”
“There was beauty everywhere, strange beauty, even—especially?—in a children’s polio hospital.”
“a set of poems. About the long journey he had made to find her. About the two devils, war and polio, that had brought it about, and the two angels, love and poetry, that had saved him.”
“Polio is like love, Frank says … Years later, when you think you have recovered, it comes back.”
Frank is much the more vibrant character thanks to his family’s wartime past in Hungary and his budding vocation as a poet, which was spurred on by his friendship with Sullivan, a fellow inmate at his previous rehabilitation center. The narrative spends time with nurses, parents and other patients but keeps coming back to Frank and Elsa. But Chapter 7, with Frank and his mother Ida still back in Budapest, was my favorite.
I was reminded of Tracy Farr’s work, especially the look back from decades later. A strong premise and some great lines, but for me there was something slightly lacking in the execution. (From the Wellcome Book Prize 2017 longlist.)
Favorite lines:
“During the long days in hospital, the sky passing across the high window in the Isolation Ward had become Elsa’s backyard, her freedom, her picture show. Watched, the sky slowed itself to a silent, endless semaphore of shapes and colours, as if it were signalling a message.”
“There was beauty everywhere, strange beauty, even—especially?—in a children’s polio hospital.”
“a set of poems. About the long journey he had made to find her. About the two devils, war and polio, that had brought it about, and the two angels, love and poetry, that had saved him.”
“Polio is like love, Frank says … Years later, when you think you have recovered, it comes back.”
August 7, 2018
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From time to time I like to read a book from my signed collection shelf. These are books that are on my ‘keeps’ shelf. The Golden Age is a book that has been sitting on my special ‘keeps’ book cabinet since I met the author Joan London back at a Stories on Stage author in 2015. I recall enjoying the author event given by Joan, to mark the release of her much anticipated third book, The Golden Age. What struck me most about the author talk and the book itself was the extent of research and historical detail London included in her book. It hardly comes as a surprise to me that since its release in 2014, The Golden Age has received a whole host of literary awards and it has been shortlisted for many more. This novel is set in my home state of Western Australian, during the 1950’s and it was simply a joy to read. London perfectly captures the nostalgia of Perth during this era. London’s examination into the effects of polio and the narrative focus on a convalescent home for victims of polio based in Perth was historically fascinating. A moving tribute to times past, I endorse The Golden Age completely.
From time to time I like to read a book from my signed collection shelf. These are books that are on my ‘keeps’ shelf. The Golden Age is a book that has been sitting on my special ‘keeps’ book cabinet since I met the author Joan London back at a Stories on Stage author in 2015. I recall enjoying the author event given by Joan, to mark the release of her much anticipated third book, The Golden Age. What struck me most about the author talk and the book itself was the extent of research and historical detail London included in her book. It hardly comes as a surprise to me that since its release in 2014, The Golden Age has received a whole host of literary awards and it has been shortlisted for many more. This novel is set in my home state of Western Australian, during the 1950’s and it was simply a joy to read. London perfectly captures the nostalgia of Perth during this era. London’s examination into the effects of polio and the narrative focus on a convalescent home for victims of polio based in Perth was historically fascinating. A moving tribute to times past, I endorse The Golden Age completely.
September 20, 2016
I seldom comment on why I rate a book, probably because I'm basically lazy, but I feel I must comment on this beautifully written story by the Western Australian writer, Joan London. It is set in a tragic time when the blight of a polio epidemic struck. But it is not a tragic story, rather one of love and hope - love in its several forms and hope for the future, varying with each character. The locale I know intimately; the era is my own; and I relate to the polio epidemic personally because a life-long friend, who has since died, was struck down at that time. But I think the story holds up and is worthy of five stars regardless of my personal bias.
January 12, 2022
I liked this book, but I didn’t love it. It was perfectly enjoyable while reading it, but it wasn’t earth shattering, and I’ve barely thought of it in the time since I finished it.
I did enjoy the pace though, it actually made me feel like I was right there in Perth on a lazy hot summer’s day in the 1950’s. And it’s very much an eye-opening experience with regards to Polio.
I did enjoy the pace though, it actually made me feel like I was right there in Perth on a lazy hot summer’s day in the 1950’s. And it’s very much an eye-opening experience with regards to Polio.
May 19, 2017
An extremely easy read. Gorgeous prose.
March 23, 2015
This book was for my local library book club.
The main theme for me in this one is all the main characters change to become “new” Australians. In the case of Frank & his parents, they are Hungarian migrants that escaped the Jewish extermination thru deception. They were professionals in Budapest & are now doing menial jobs in their new life in Perth. In the case of the children, they are all severely affected by polio & are learning to walk again. The active lifestyles they once had are gone, and it is interesting that all the children become quite cerebral. Even the baby Fabrio, croons when he is on his own, making his own songs during his enforced inactivity. Sullivan sees snow on the white hospital ceiling, while in the iron lung & composes poetry. MOst of the children become active readers, and mature sooner than normal.
The determination of these children will be fierce as they try to rebuild their lives as young adults in a world that will stigmatises them. Elsa’s aunt suggests a typing college where she can be of service to a charity, because she is now deformed & not fit to pursue an active career like medicine. Patients will be turned off by someone scared by Polio. How our two main characters become adults in an afterword at the end. In some ways, I didn’t feel it was necessary, but I remember the ending to Gilgamesh was also weakened by a similar device.
Sister Penny is a dynamic character: a lusty woman, her husband is a war casualty and she is stigmatised by both her sister-in-law and daughter. I felt the daughter was a cruel person, pandering to her new “family” that gives her some sense of social superiority against her mother who works long hours to pay for her earlier education. She enjoys men & we see her being a pragmatist with her sexual encounters; she doesn’t expect a lasting, permanent relationship- to the extent that she shrugs off a possible long term lover.
The strength in London’s writing is in her ability to write good, strong, multidimensional characters. All of them are believable & as such the story carries along well. There was no incident that didn’t feel true. You discover that much is a result of her interviewing patients that attended the hospital during this period. I also suspect she visited the hospital as a child, for whatever reason.
Again, like Gilgamesh, the main themes are relationships & displacement & resolving issues thru strength of character. My complaint is the sense of nostalgia that flows through the book. For me, this was a problem, and I see it creating a problem with this book lasting the test of time.Who cares about ChooChoo Bars, or the leading brand of soft drink in Perth. With books such as this, will we care what happened in 1950s Australia?? So many people now have forgotten the Polio epidemic, that I doubt it will resonate with younger readers.
The main theme for me in this one is all the main characters change to become “new” Australians. In the case of Frank & his parents, they are Hungarian migrants that escaped the Jewish extermination thru deception. They were professionals in Budapest & are now doing menial jobs in their new life in Perth. In the case of the children, they are all severely affected by polio & are learning to walk again. The active lifestyles they once had are gone, and it is interesting that all the children become quite cerebral. Even the baby Fabrio, croons when he is on his own, making his own songs during his enforced inactivity. Sullivan sees snow on the white hospital ceiling, while in the iron lung & composes poetry. MOst of the children become active readers, and mature sooner than normal.
The determination of these children will be fierce as they try to rebuild their lives as young adults in a world that will stigmatises them. Elsa’s aunt suggests a typing college where she can be of service to a charity, because she is now deformed & not fit to pursue an active career like medicine. Patients will be turned off by someone scared by Polio. How our two main characters become adults in an afterword at the end. In some ways, I didn’t feel it was necessary, but I remember the ending to Gilgamesh was also weakened by a similar device.
Sister Penny is a dynamic character: a lusty woman, her husband is a war casualty and she is stigmatised by both her sister-in-law and daughter. I felt the daughter was a cruel person, pandering to her new “family” that gives her some sense of social superiority against her mother who works long hours to pay for her earlier education. She enjoys men & we see her being a pragmatist with her sexual encounters; she doesn’t expect a lasting, permanent relationship- to the extent that she shrugs off a possible long term lover.
The strength in London’s writing is in her ability to write good, strong, multidimensional characters. All of them are believable & as such the story carries along well. There was no incident that didn’t feel true. You discover that much is a result of her interviewing patients that attended the hospital during this period. I also suspect she visited the hospital as a child, for whatever reason.
Again, like Gilgamesh, the main themes are relationships & displacement & resolving issues thru strength of character. My complaint is the sense of nostalgia that flows through the book. For me, this was a problem, and I see it creating a problem with this book lasting the test of time.Who cares about ChooChoo Bars, or the leading brand of soft drink in Perth. With books such as this, will we care what happened in 1950s Australia?? So many people now have forgotten the Polio epidemic, that I doubt it will resonate with younger readers.
April 23, 2015
I don't think I've ever given a book such a low rating, but I can't even pretend to have liked this book and am abandoning it before finishing.
London is a WA writer and has won a healthy swag of gongs for her work. I read this novel as part of my quest to get to know some of the authors in Adelaide for Adelaide Writers Week, otherwise I might not have picked it up - pity, that.
I have no issue with the dreamy pace of the book or the setting and sense of place, but I have loads of issue with plenty else.
The characters are dull, two dimensional and detached - from each other and the story. Each scene in the book could almost have been written as a solo piece, such was the lack of association between each character.
Even the refugee family come across as cardboard cutouts, where they should be a complex, seething mass of emotions, hopes and insecurities. The delicate, stricken boy, Frank, is mostly wet. I found it very difficult to be convinced of his sensitive, poetic soul through her portrayal of his teenaged moping about over a fellow patient.
The book is sloppy in parts and in others just wrong. On one page she talks of purple oleander flowers. Oleander doesn't come in purple - white, red and many shades of pink, but no purple.
Shortly after that she talks of children being seated for a performance - the small ones in the front row. In the very next page, now that everyone is seated, she refers to the eldest children being in the front row.
Elsewhere the book is dotted with inane, meaningless sentences posing as profound prose.
Joan London may well be a great writer, but I'm not seeing it in this book.
Don't bother.
London is a WA writer and has won a healthy swag of gongs for her work. I read this novel as part of my quest to get to know some of the authors in Adelaide for Adelaide Writers Week, otherwise I might not have picked it up - pity, that.
I have no issue with the dreamy pace of the book or the setting and sense of place, but I have loads of issue with plenty else.
The characters are dull, two dimensional and detached - from each other and the story. Each scene in the book could almost have been written as a solo piece, such was the lack of association between each character.
Even the refugee family come across as cardboard cutouts, where they should be a complex, seething mass of emotions, hopes and insecurities. The delicate, stricken boy, Frank, is mostly wet. I found it very difficult to be convinced of his sensitive, poetic soul through her portrayal of his teenaged moping about over a fellow patient.
The book is sloppy in parts and in others just wrong. On one page she talks of purple oleander flowers. Oleander doesn't come in purple - white, red and many shades of pink, but no purple.
Shortly after that she talks of children being seated for a performance - the small ones in the front row. In the very next page, now that everyone is seated, she refers to the eldest children being in the front row.
Elsewhere the book is dotted with inane, meaningless sentences posing as profound prose.
Joan London may well be a great writer, but I'm not seeing it in this book.
Don't bother.
May 10, 2015
‘The Golden Age’ is set in Perth during the polio outbreak in the 1950s, not long before Jonas Salk discovered a vaccine. It centres around the inhabitants of ‘The Golden Age’, which was an actual convalescent home for children who’d had polio. The children lived there while they had therapy and learned skills to cope with their new life.
The novel is a love story between two (fictional) children who live in the home—Frank Gold and Elsa Briggs. They’re invalids, but otherwise normal kids on the cusp of adolescence, experiencing all the awakenings of that age.
Frank’s parents, Meyer and Ida, are Jewish immigrants who escaped Hungary and post-WWII Europe for a fresh start in Australia.
However, their hopes are dashed when Frank is struck with polio. Meyer copes by walking the streets of Perth until he finds acceptance, but Ida, who was a concert pianist in Budapest, has a harder time.
Frank falls in love with Elsa, the eldest and the most beautiful child in her large family:
As soon as Frank sees Elsa, he is captivated:
There are other characters: Sister Olive Penny, who cares for the children and tries to make them happy; and Sullivan, the promising rower struck down with polio during the Head of the River, who lives in an iron lung and dreams up poetry.
I loved this book: the story, the prose, the characters. It’s not a long read, it’s simply written, and it’s beautiful. It takes what could have been a sad tale, and turns it into an uplifting story about the resilience of children. It’s about children leading their parents and showing them how to find happiness, even in adversity. It’s about being happy even after being stricken with a debilitating and frightening illness. It’s about accepting the whatever life delivers—war or illness—and still finding moments of joy. It’s about anyone, no matter what their affliction, still being able to live a fulfilling life.
The novel is a love story between two (fictional) children who live in the home—Frank Gold and Elsa Briggs. They’re invalids, but otherwise normal kids on the cusp of adolescence, experiencing all the awakenings of that age.
Frank’s parents, Meyer and Ida, are Jewish immigrants who escaped Hungary and post-WWII Europe for a fresh start in Australia.
‘Nobody here could imagine the waters of the Swan running red. The Causeway bombed, tanks rolling up St Georges Terrace. Block after block of empty buildings, blackened and broken like ruined teeth. Shots ringing out. The hunted running through Kings Park. Bodies piled ten high on the steps of Parliament House.’
However, their hopes are dashed when Frank is struck with polio. Meyer copes by walking the streets of Perth until he finds acceptance, but Ida, who was a concert pianist in Budapest, has a harder time.
Frank falls in love with Elsa, the eldest and the most beautiful child in her large family:
‘From the moment she was put in Margaret’s arms, it was as if the stars came out. She knew at once this child was special. So graceful and dignified that people seemed to bow before her in her pram! This was the best thing that had ever happened to Margaret. The turning point. Her life had at last been made right.’
As soon as Frank sees Elsa, he is captivated:
‘She looked like a drawing done with a fine lead pencil. He noted the straightness of her nose, her delicate, grave mouth, the clear curve of her jawline, the length of her neck from the bottom of her earlobe to the hollow of her throat. There was a shadow between her eye and cheekbone. An aristocrat. Her hands lay in her lap. She was exhausted.
Elsa, he said to himself in the doorway.’
There are other characters: Sister Olive Penny, who cares for the children and tries to make them happy; and Sullivan, the promising rower struck down with polio during the Head of the River, who lives in an iron lung and dreams up poetry.
‘Once you get used to your condition, he said, your imagination becomes free again.’
I loved this book: the story, the prose, the characters. It’s not a long read, it’s simply written, and it’s beautiful. It takes what could have been a sad tale, and turns it into an uplifting story about the resilience of children. It’s about children leading their parents and showing them how to find happiness, even in adversity. It’s about being happy even after being stricken with a debilitating and frightening illness. It’s about accepting the whatever life delivers—war or illness—and still finding moments of joy. It’s about anyone, no matter what their affliction, still being able to live a fulfilling life.
April 24, 2016
Joan London's The Golden Age came highly recommended by reviewers taking part in the Australian Women Writers Challenge, it's a short, quick read at a mere 240 pages, but I think it's a book that needs to be read in just a sitting or two; with my constant interruptions, The Golden Age failed to connect with me. I loved the premise, about children struggling to recover from polio in Perth in the 1950s - a sense of time and place is something I always look for, and found it here. But I think the author's way of chopping up the story into small pieces and shifting the perspective from thirteen-year-old Frank Gold and twelve-year-old Elsa to Frank's parents and a nurse at the Golden Age Children's Polio Convalescent Home was somehow disruptive for me. While the parallels between the children's stories and that of their parents and other adults helped structure the novel and develop some of the ideas here, it made it increasingly hard for me to build up a sense of flow and momentum, and to really care for any of them.
The fate of migrants in Australia, of the drift between children and their parents, of class divides and ethnic divides, of misunderstandings small yet profound, and the suffering felt by all during the polio epidemic makes this a rich and heartfelt historical novel. Poetry plays a role, and the ability of art - be it words or music - to convey emotion and help people connect to others. So it is possibly ironic that London's own art, her own words here, didn't quite manage to connect with me. Sometimes, that third-person omniscient narrator has an alienating effect on me, in which you are both told too much and not enough. I've always been turned off by stories told this way, in which my own engagement is an unnecessary thing, superfluous to the story. London writes mostly in this style, telling me what is deemed important, what characters are thinking and feeling, but she does at times drift into a more poetic style, holding back on the omniscience. This uneven quality didn't help matters, and at the end of it I was left feeling only mildly sad at the outcome of Frank and Elsa's lives.
A sense of nostalgia helped, and the most strongly written part for me was the dip into the past, in Poland during the Nazi occupation, and how Frank lived for a time with his mother's piano teacher, hiding in the ceiling when a client came. I think I might have loved this had it been longer, more drawn-out - not to make it self-indulgent, I do hate that with a passion, but just to make the characters more alive, more human, and less like sketches of people.
The fate of migrants in Australia, of the drift between children and their parents, of class divides and ethnic divides, of misunderstandings small yet profound, and the suffering felt by all during the polio epidemic makes this a rich and heartfelt historical novel. Poetry plays a role, and the ability of art - be it words or music - to convey emotion and help people connect to others. So it is possibly ironic that London's own art, her own words here, didn't quite manage to connect with me. Sometimes, that third-person omniscient narrator has an alienating effect on me, in which you are both told too much and not enough. I've always been turned off by stories told this way, in which my own engagement is an unnecessary thing, superfluous to the story. London writes mostly in this style, telling me what is deemed important, what characters are thinking and feeling, but she does at times drift into a more poetic style, holding back on the omniscience. This uneven quality didn't help matters, and at the end of it I was left feeling only mildly sad at the outcome of Frank and Elsa's lives.
A sense of nostalgia helped, and the most strongly written part for me was the dip into the past, in Poland during the Nazi occupation, and how Frank lived for a time with his mother's piano teacher, hiding in the ceiling when a client came. I think I might have loved this had it been longer, more drawn-out - not to make it self-indulgent, I do hate that with a passion, but just to make the characters more alive, more human, and less like sketches of people.
October 28, 2014
Glows with beautiful language
Sharp edged nostalgia but a nebulous narrative
There was a lot to love. London is a poetic, visual writer. Her prose is sharp. Without waxing lyrical, she sets the scene vividly. I loved her commentary on the Royal Visit (the photographed flowers, the framed letter). I felt I could see and breath-in the Perth of the '50's that she pictured so clearly for me. Many memories from my own golden childhood were tickled in the narrative from Argonauts to Choo Choo bars (though shame on Frank for being a little dismissive of Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopedia - my treasure trove of trivia!).
The backstory was deftly woven : comparing Old World Europe and provincial Perth; setting nostalgia for what was against hope for a new life; showing family as belonging and family as isolation.
But I was disappointed. I am a big fan of Gilgamesh (pushing it on anyone interested in Australian literature). I so wanted to love this one. My husband is a polio survivor, still haunted by his time in hospital as a child, so there is a personal context. Unfortunately there was little substance woven within the beautiful prose.
The story of the emerging "first love" between Frank and Elsa wasn't enough to make the Golden Age anything more than a mellow, nebulous embrace. All the niceties were there, but you were left wanting so much more : something as sharp-edged and unsentimental as the characterisation. We have a series of poignant vignettes without an emotional investment in the characters.
I love this quote from towards the end (and well done to an author who has done her homework)
"Polio is like love, ... years later, when you think you have recovered, it comes back."
A small, almost meaningless point : I wasn't taken by the cover before I even started and, now that I am finished, I see it as questionable and irrelevant. It shows a young man on a train - something that doesn't pertain to the narrative at all. This is meaningless stock photography, a cheap letdown for the author and the reader.
(Having just finished reading, I will see how it settles in my memory and may come back and change this to a 4 star review ... so I guess it is a 3-and-a-half review.)
Sharp edged nostalgia but a nebulous narrative
There was a lot to love. London is a poetic, visual writer. Her prose is sharp. Without waxing lyrical, she sets the scene vividly. I loved her commentary on the Royal Visit (the photographed flowers, the framed letter). I felt I could see and breath-in the Perth of the '50's that she pictured so clearly for me. Many memories from my own golden childhood were tickled in the narrative from Argonauts to Choo Choo bars (though shame on Frank for being a little dismissive of Arthur Mee's Children's Encyclopedia - my treasure trove of trivia!).
The backstory was deftly woven : comparing Old World Europe and provincial Perth; setting nostalgia for what was against hope for a new life; showing family as belonging and family as isolation.
But I was disappointed. I am a big fan of Gilgamesh (pushing it on anyone interested in Australian literature). I so wanted to love this one. My husband is a polio survivor, still haunted by his time in hospital as a child, so there is a personal context. Unfortunately there was little substance woven within the beautiful prose.
The story of the emerging "first love" between Frank and Elsa wasn't enough to make the Golden Age anything more than a mellow, nebulous embrace. All the niceties were there, but you were left wanting so much more : something as sharp-edged and unsentimental as the characterisation. We have a series of poignant vignettes without an emotional investment in the characters.
I love this quote from towards the end (and well done to an author who has done her homework)
"Polio is like love, ... years later, when you think you have recovered, it comes back."
A small, almost meaningless point : I wasn't taken by the cover before I even started and, now that I am finished, I see it as questionable and irrelevant. It shows a young man on a train - something that doesn't pertain to the narrative at all. This is meaningless stock photography, a cheap letdown for the author and the reader.
(Having just finished reading, I will see how it settles in my memory and may come back and change this to a 4 star review ... so I guess it is a 3-and-a-half review.)
November 1, 2016
This book/story was way too weak/shallow for me. There were no good character build ups nor story lines that were very much interesting which made the book almost boring. This was a 'translation' from Australian to English so I can't imagine that a lot was lost on the translation. The ending seemed to the last thought up for the novel - a quick tie up with no substance to it. It was supposed to be a love story between two young teens who were in a polio rehab in the early 50s but the love story was really kind of pushed to the back of the story line. Just not a lot of substance in the story.
October 28, 2016
Walt Whitman's words on page 186, distinctly resonate throughout The Golden Age. Historically inspired fiction at its best.
“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land.” ― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
“Not I, nor anyone else can travel that road for you.
You must travel it by yourself.
It is not far. It is within reach.
Perhaps you have been on it since you were born, and did not know.
Perhaps it is everywhere - on water and land.” ― Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass
February 5, 2017
I'm so surprised to see that this is a recent release. It reads like a classic. The story centers around a convalescent home for children with polio in 1950's Australia. The writing is excellent and the characters are fully formed. I loved that Frank would walk into a room and feel that a poem was there as if poetry was in the air around us but you have to coax it on to the page. I will definitely be looking for more from Joan London.
August 26, 2016
Not sure why this book showed as unread, as I clearly remember reading it. I too suffered from Polio in the early 50's and the descriptions brought back strong memories. Very real emotions, and all I can say, I loved it.
January 28, 2016
One of the most mediocre books I've read in a long time. How it won so many awards is beyond me. The ending was just pitiful and somehow made a pretty ordinary book even worse.
January 29, 2017
Do like what I did, go into this book not knowing a thing. You won't be sorry. Beautifully written.
October 22, 2020
In the midst of the Perth polio pandemic in the early 1950s, a young Hungarian WW2 refugee contracts polio and discovers within himself the heart of a poet. In the unlikely place of a rehab hospital called The Golden Age, he finds his delicate muse and becomes devoted to her with all the intensity that young love musters from shaky beginnings.
More heart warming than heart breaking, surprisingly compelling and told so incredibly clearly that I felt I was there.
A must read.
More heart warming than heart breaking, surprisingly compelling and told so incredibly clearly that I felt I was there.
A must read.
February 26, 2015
Maybe our memories of childhood are more sensory than memories of adulthood. Maybe they are more fragmentary, minutely focused. Time seems unbounded, endless. I think this idea is part of the reason the book is called “The Golden Age.” It’s not about nostalgia but about looking back on a time that no longer exists. Perth in the 1950’s is the setting of most of this novel. The main characters are Frank and Elsa, on the cusp of adolescence, both afflicted with polio and living in The Golden Age, a pub in Leederville that has been converted into a convalescent home for children. This should be a narrative of struggle, of pain and fear. Conversely, for these two, they form a relationship, they fall in love, it is a very sweet time. When I think about the novel, I imagine the classic old Victorian pub, bathed in the warm light of dusk, the two kids finding a sense of themselves and their identities, away from their families. “The velvety dusk, the lights appearing, the penciled clarity of roofs and trees. Softening, the city seemed more grown up, more itself, with its own mystery and potential.” It’s about the growing interiority of kids this age as they think things through and attempt to make sense of themselves.
The adults in the novel are struggling with issues related to the period. Meyer and Ida are the parents of the boy in the novel and have exchanged the devastation of post-war Europe for sleepy Perth. Being Jewish, they have both lost much of their immediate families. Here’s Meyer: “He saw the watermelon clouds piled up above the dark breast of the river and he smelt the weedy flow of its depths. A fresh water breeze found him and, like a puppy, licked his face and neck, breathed cool life back into him. Water and summer evenings: ghosts of his past. The natural world, which was all he allowed himself to miss. Balaton. The lake, childhood. His brothers. He always felt better near water.”
The Golden Age for this couple is a far-distant thing. And while Perth is a long way away from Europe, characters such as Sister Penny are impacted by the events of WW11. But, as one reviewer notes: “The world that London summons in these pages soon exceeds a certain simplicity of plot.” (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/...) I suspect that the extent to which you might like the book depends on how much you agree with this statement. Certainly, the plot is fairly simple. I wanted more out of the world that London created. Maybe more friction. More sparks. Each time I read a bit of this novel, I expected that something would happen that would pull me in more strongly. And the end is disappointing.
Having said this, she writes very well. I just kept expecting more…
The adults in the novel are struggling with issues related to the period. Meyer and Ida are the parents of the boy in the novel and have exchanged the devastation of post-war Europe for sleepy Perth. Being Jewish, they have both lost much of their immediate families. Here’s Meyer: “He saw the watermelon clouds piled up above the dark breast of the river and he smelt the weedy flow of its depths. A fresh water breeze found him and, like a puppy, licked his face and neck, breathed cool life back into him. Water and summer evenings: ghosts of his past. The natural world, which was all he allowed himself to miss. Balaton. The lake, childhood. His brothers. He always felt better near water.”
The Golden Age for this couple is a far-distant thing. And while Perth is a long way away from Europe, characters such as Sister Penny are impacted by the events of WW11. But, as one reviewer notes: “The world that London summons in these pages soon exceeds a certain simplicity of plot.” (http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/...) I suspect that the extent to which you might like the book depends on how much you agree with this statement. Certainly, the plot is fairly simple. I wanted more out of the world that London created. Maybe more friction. More sparks. Each time I read a bit of this novel, I expected that something would happen that would pull me in more strongly. And the end is disappointing.
Having said this, she writes very well. I just kept expecting more…
April 20, 2015
“What had been temporary had become settled. What had seemed like the end of the world had become the centre.”
I described Joan London’s The Golden Age to a friend as a ‘quiet’ book. And it is. Quietly brilliant.
This isn’t a book with a plot that knocks you over or language that demands your attention. Instead, the characters creep into your heart, win your admiration. London’s words are plain but poetic – I found myself re-reading passages and thinking, “Isn’t that just perfection?”.
“His parents had stood like this at the railing on the deck of the ship to Australia, backs turned to him, slender drifts of smoke curling up above the horizon like the thread of their own thoughts. There was something lonely yet resolute about the way they stood there. It was not quite hope.”
And then there were scenes that were simple but exquisite and I’m still thinking about them – Sullivan in the iron lung; the children in their woolen bathers, lying in the ‘angel bath'; Meyer organising bottles of ginger beer for the concert; Her Majesty’s visit; children in wheelchairs along the verandah at dusk, waiting for the lights at the Netting Factory to come on.
“…some of the young men who came from the Apex Club to play board games with the children, in white shirts and ties, fresh-shaven, with big, clean ears, ushering their fiancees into seats.”
It’s a story about polio –
“He lay awake far into the night. Many things would happen to him in his life, he thought. But they would happen to a cripple.”
It’s a story about first love between Frank and Elsa; it’s a story about poetry –
“Coming to terms with death is a necessary element in any great poem, Sullivan once said. And in this matter, Gold, he’d said, rolling his eyes towards Frank, we have had an early advantage.”
It’s a story about Australian culture seen through the eyes of migrants Ida and Meyer; it’s a story about Sister Penny, a female character who refuses to fit the role expected of her. It’s an uncluttered plot but it’s confident, accomplished storytelling, done with one delicate layer upon another.
In telling these stories, London contrasts themes of isolation and togetherness, and plays with scale – the vastness of Australia, the specific horror of polio.
“The other patients were younger, from all over the state: from Wiluna in the desert, from Broome up the coast, from Rawlinna, a siding on the Trans-Australia line. Nowhere, it seemed, was too remote for the polio virus to find you.”
5/5 Beautiful.
I described Joan London’s The Golden Age to a friend as a ‘quiet’ book. And it is. Quietly brilliant.
This isn’t a book with a plot that knocks you over or language that demands your attention. Instead, the characters creep into your heart, win your admiration. London’s words are plain but poetic – I found myself re-reading passages and thinking, “Isn’t that just perfection?”.
“His parents had stood like this at the railing on the deck of the ship to Australia, backs turned to him, slender drifts of smoke curling up above the horizon like the thread of their own thoughts. There was something lonely yet resolute about the way they stood there. It was not quite hope.”
And then there were scenes that were simple but exquisite and I’m still thinking about them – Sullivan in the iron lung; the children in their woolen bathers, lying in the ‘angel bath'; Meyer organising bottles of ginger beer for the concert; Her Majesty’s visit; children in wheelchairs along the verandah at dusk, waiting for the lights at the Netting Factory to come on.
“…some of the young men who came from the Apex Club to play board games with the children, in white shirts and ties, fresh-shaven, with big, clean ears, ushering their fiancees into seats.”
It’s a story about polio –
“He lay awake far into the night. Many things would happen to him in his life, he thought. But they would happen to a cripple.”
It’s a story about first love between Frank and Elsa; it’s a story about poetry –
“Coming to terms with death is a necessary element in any great poem, Sullivan once said. And in this matter, Gold, he’d said, rolling his eyes towards Frank, we have had an early advantage.”
It’s a story about Australian culture seen through the eyes of migrants Ida and Meyer; it’s a story about Sister Penny, a female character who refuses to fit the role expected of her. It’s an uncluttered plot but it’s confident, accomplished storytelling, done with one delicate layer upon another.
In telling these stories, London contrasts themes of isolation and togetherness, and plays with scale – the vastness of Australia, the specific horror of polio.
“The other patients were younger, from all over the state: from Wiluna in the desert, from Broome up the coast, from Rawlinna, a siding on the Trans-Australia line. Nowhere, it seemed, was too remote for the polio virus to find you.”
5/5 Beautiful.
May 16, 2021
Simple, yet powerful writing, this book surprised me. I was sure it was not going to fit my mood, I was right. And still, I could not put it down.
It is 1954. Frank Gold is 13 years old when he is diagnosed with Polio. Frank and his family are WWII Jewish immigrants from war torn Hungary. Elsa, a year younger, and a native Australian, meets Frank at The Golden Age Home where they are both being treated. The story encompasses more than their young love. London brings together a cast of characters, each with their own life stories. Everyone of them will grab hold of your heart and pull. Frank's parents, who are having difficulty acclimating to their new country. Elsa's mother, who has strived to be the perfect mother, now finding herself overwhelmed with her daughters illness. Then there are the nurses and other personnel at The Golden Age, each one touching Frank in a special way.
The end, I had a feeling, early on, that I was not going to like it. Thus 4 stars instead of 5. No reason though for you not to read it. Time well spent, with a superb writer and beautiful story.
It is 1954. Frank Gold is 13 years old when he is diagnosed with Polio. Frank and his family are WWII Jewish immigrants from war torn Hungary. Elsa, a year younger, and a native Australian, meets Frank at The Golden Age Home where they are both being treated. The story encompasses more than their young love. London brings together a cast of characters, each with their own life stories. Everyone of them will grab hold of your heart and pull. Frank's parents, who are having difficulty acclimating to their new country. Elsa's mother, who has strived to be the perfect mother, now finding herself overwhelmed with her daughters illness. Then there are the nurses and other personnel at The Golden Age, each one touching Frank in a special way.
The end, I had a feeling, early on, that I was not going to like it. Thus 4 stars instead of 5. No reason though for you not to read it. Time well spent, with a superb writer and beautiful story.
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