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Golden Days
Available again in paperback, Golden Days is a major novel from one of the most provocative voices on the American literary scene. Linking the recent past with an imagined future, Carolyn See captures life in Los Angeles in the 70s and 80s. This marvelously imaginative, hilarious, and original work offers fresh insights into the way we were, the way we are, and the way we could end up.
208 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 1986
15 people are currently reading
1122 people want to read
About the author
Carolyn See
37 books76 followersCarolyn See was the author of ten books, including the memoir, Dreaming: Hard Luck and Good Times in America, an advice book on writing, Making a Literary Life, and the novels There Will Never Be Another You and The Handyman.
She was the Friday-morning reviewer for The Washington Post, and she has been on the boards of the National Book Critics Circle and PENWest International. She won both the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Getty Center fellowship. She lived in Pacific Palisades, California.
See also wrote books under the pen name Monica Highland, a name she shared with two others, her daughter Lisa See and her longtime companion, John Espey, who died in 2000.
See was known for writing novels set in Los Angeles and co-edited books that revolve around the city, including a book of short stories, LA Shorts, and the pictorial books Santa Monica Bay: Paradise by the Sea: A Pictorial History of Santa Monica, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Ocean Park, Pacific Palisades, Topanga & Malibu, and The California Pop-Up Book, which celebrates the city's unique architecture.
She was the Friday-morning reviewer for The Washington Post, and she has been on the boards of the National Book Critics Circle and PENWest International. She won both the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Getty Center fellowship. She lived in Pacific Palisades, California.
See also wrote books under the pen name Monica Highland, a name she shared with two others, her daughter Lisa See and her longtime companion, John Espey, who died in 2000.
See was known for writing novels set in Los Angeles and co-edited books that revolve around the city, including a book of short stories, LA Shorts, and the pictorial books Santa Monica Bay: Paradise by the Sea: A Pictorial History of Santa Monica, Venice, Marina Del Rey, Ocean Park, Pacific Palisades, Topanga & Malibu, and The California Pop-Up Book, which celebrates the city's unique architecture.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 63 reviews
February 2, 2015
I love this book, reread it regularly and can't believe I haven't already reviewed it here. Of my three favorite LA writers --- Eve Babitz, Joan Didion and Carolyn See --- I think (dare I say this aloud) that See is the most creative, her sense of humor is the most subversive and in the long run, her early fiction is most telling of the time in which it was written. "Golden Days" spans time, from the 1950s to an apocalyptic present, telling the story of a wife, ex-wife, mother, lover and successful sales woman, selling other women a stake in their own lives. Much of the book is autobiographical. Some of it overlaps her wonderfully bizarre first novel, "The Rest is Done with Mirrors." It capture the unique mood of the 1980s and does Nathaniel West proud with its nuclear disaster ending, which finds its inevitability decades earlier when Edith, the main character, notes: "Every night, it seemed, we saw another 'experimental' atomic explosion white out our tiny screen. We drank a lot. Because even then, especially then, we could see well enough there was no future." "Golden Days" has been reprinted by the University of California Press, but it's overpriced; I wish it would be picked up by NYRB Classics and made easily accessible again. I wish it would be read by more people I know. I wish more important LA women writers were given their due. I wish I wish I wish ...
December 9, 2011
wow, i bet this book drove a lot of people crazy. people who were looking for a good post-apocalyptic nightmare, people who were looking for death and devastation, people who were looking for a polemic, those who wanted to see good (sigh) triumph over evil.
this book isn't really any of those things, altho it contains events that would, among the unimaginative, be the perfect setup. but Golden Days gives us a nuclear holocaust with none of the above dressed in their usual attire.
this book does two things to perfection: it paints for us the california of the 70s & 80s, haloed by golden light; and it tells us how the vast majority of us will end up walking into the end of days.
when East Coast and Midwest folks call California a land of nuts & flakes, the California the protagonist lives is the one they're talking about. California of magical thinking. California of impossible dreams. California where a person can endlessly re-invent herself until she attains her own perfection. and that's what our protagonist does, through a couple of marriages and careers, living a life that already seems quaint: her options are no longer available to us. even after the bombs drop, she fails to become a hard-nosed realist. and oh, i so love that about her. would that we could still...
our protagonist is not what you might call political. she doesn't obsessively follow the events that will lead to devastation. in fact, she hardly notices them at all. like most people, she goes about her days; unlike most people, she looks quite a bit harder for her own kind of happiness. still, her concerns are largely personal, not geopolitical, and among her friends a kind of obliviousness is the norm. which, i think, is true of most people. even the well-informed are not well-informed on everything, and an even smaller percentage of the well-informed are habituated to sustained critical thinking (if the news tells me X, how do i know it's true? and if it is true, what does it imply? etc.). so even when the end is nigh, she's out looking for a really great lunch rather than a sturdy underground shelter.
and it may be hard to swallow, but i'm pretty convinced that's how most people would be.
you know how little kids, when imagining scenarios of them versus some larger, stronger opponent, will start tossing out improbable scenarios? "ya, and then i'll get a bunch of vegetable oil, and i'll throw it on the ground, and he'll slip when he runs at me and fall and then i'll jump him!" i bet most people's inner disaster scenarios are something like that. but when the moment actually arrives, one finds the vegetable oil in short supply, and what else is there to do? go have a really fine lunch, the best one to be found.
in the end this is a terribly optimistic book, optimistic in the way (only, i suspect) a Californian can be. it paints a California that feels so true to the time, and holds close what California is and will always be about: the beauty, and utility, of dreams.
this book isn't really any of those things, altho it contains events that would, among the unimaginative, be the perfect setup. but Golden Days gives us a nuclear holocaust with none of the above dressed in their usual attire.
this book does two things to perfection: it paints for us the california of the 70s & 80s, haloed by golden light; and it tells us how the vast majority of us will end up walking into the end of days.
when East Coast and Midwest folks call California a land of nuts & flakes, the California the protagonist lives is the one they're talking about. California of magical thinking. California of impossible dreams. California where a person can endlessly re-invent herself until she attains her own perfection. and that's what our protagonist does, through a couple of marriages and careers, living a life that already seems quaint: her options are no longer available to us. even after the bombs drop, she fails to become a hard-nosed realist. and oh, i so love that about her. would that we could still...
our protagonist is not what you might call political. she doesn't obsessively follow the events that will lead to devastation. in fact, she hardly notices them at all. like most people, she goes about her days; unlike most people, she looks quite a bit harder for her own kind of happiness. still, her concerns are largely personal, not geopolitical, and among her friends a kind of obliviousness is the norm. which, i think, is true of most people. even the well-informed are not well-informed on everything, and an even smaller percentage of the well-informed are habituated to sustained critical thinking (if the news tells me X, how do i know it's true? and if it is true, what does it imply? etc.). so even when the end is nigh, she's out looking for a really great lunch rather than a sturdy underground shelter.
and it may be hard to swallow, but i'm pretty convinced that's how most people would be.
you know how little kids, when imagining scenarios of them versus some larger, stronger opponent, will start tossing out improbable scenarios? "ya, and then i'll get a bunch of vegetable oil, and i'll throw it on the ground, and he'll slip when he runs at me and fall and then i'll jump him!" i bet most people's inner disaster scenarios are something like that. but when the moment actually arrives, one finds the vegetable oil in short supply, and what else is there to do? go have a really fine lunch, the best one to be found.
in the end this is a terribly optimistic book, optimistic in the way (only, i suspect) a Californian can be. it paints a California that feels so true to the time, and holds close what California is and will always be about: the beauty, and utility, of dreams.
January 30, 2008
What a strange reading experience this was. I spent the first three-fourths of this novel HATING it—I hated the narrator, who I found racist, classist, and just plain unpleasant; I hated the purported “feminism” the characters spouted, which to me boiled down to an icky “men are pricks, so let’s take ‘em for all they’re worth!” philosophy; I hated the depiction of L.A., which was not my L.A. at all (when is it ever?). But then, well…the world ends. All the apocalyptic anxiety that weaves its way through the rest of the book pays off, and pays off big time; See does not flinch away. The bombs drop and a small group of survivors live on in Topanga Canyon, despite horrible burns, starvation, radiation poisoning. See’s depiction of the post-apocalyptic world and the way her characters react to it seem really plausible to me; I believed in this destroyed L.A. more than I believed in the pre-destruction “real” one. And there are some truly amazing images, like that of the beaches hugging the Pacific Ocean all turned to glass. *shivers* Until I hit the ending, I was planning to give my copy of this book away, but now I’m keeping it because I know I’ll want to revisit the final fourth in the future. I doubt I’ll ever read the beginning or middle again. I’m not sure what this says about the book or about me.
January 17, 2009
So far this book is SO weird. Carolyn See is sort of the grand dame of serious California/Los Angeles fiction. This book is one of those writers' writers unheralded classics, and I've been wanting to read it for a long time. It begins in Topanga Canyon in the summer of 1980, and it feels like the late 70s and early 80s. I mean, it is saturated with this uber authentic sunny narcissism that somehow believes itself to be feminism, and is also a bit classist and racist. It's creepy, truth be told. I kind of can't stand the narrator, but the more I read, the more compelled I am to keep reading. The more I read, the more sadness tinges the edges of the pages. Doomsday approaches. I have no idea how I'll feel about this book when I finish it, but I am very curious to find out.
Hmmm... it looks like I never returned to complete this review. I'm afraid that in the year that has lapsed since I read it, my memory of the novel has faded somewhat, and what I'm left with is this ossified sense of its strangeness. I don't know if this novel was meant to indict the self-indulgent ethos of "finding yourself" that underlies the frippery of the New Age movement, but I came away from this book believing that the destruction wrought upon these characters is somehow the byproduct of their self-satisfied "seeking."
The book feels dated, but in a useful way--it functioned, for me, as a direct portal back in time to the attitudes and postures of affluent, liberal Los Angeles in the early eighties, an era in which I was alive and one that I do remember, but with the fuzziness of a child. Somehow, perhaps inadvertently, this book feels "right" or "true" to my overall sense of that period. Not an altogether comfortable feeling.
Hmmm... it looks like I never returned to complete this review. I'm afraid that in the year that has lapsed since I read it, my memory of the novel has faded somewhat, and what I'm left with is this ossified sense of its strangeness. I don't know if this novel was meant to indict the self-indulgent ethos of "finding yourself" that underlies the frippery of the New Age movement, but I came away from this book believing that the destruction wrought upon these characters is somehow the byproduct of their self-satisfied "seeking."
The book feels dated, but in a useful way--it functioned, for me, as a direct portal back in time to the attitudes and postures of affluent, liberal Los Angeles in the early eighties, an era in which I was alive and one that I do remember, but with the fuzziness of a child. Somehow, perhaps inadvertently, this book feels "right" or "true" to my overall sense of that period. Not an altogether comfortable feeling.
April 13, 2010
I love books that love Los Angeles.
It's so easy to just dismiss it as shallow and full of traffic and posers and smog, and it IS all that, but there's also that sense of possibility that comes with not having a huge weight of history slapping you in the face every time you turn a corner. And those beautiful mornings that smell like flowers.
I loved how much this book brought me back to my childhood years in southern CA, with my parents' kooky friends who were into self-actualization as well as making lots of money. And in the background, that constant nebulous threat of nuclear war, which, at age 8 or so, I really had no idea what it meant, only that our president was BAD.
This was recommended to me as a "post-apocalyptic" novel, but really it's more pre-apocalyptic, with just a little bit of apocalypse at the end.
I highly recommend it, but I somehow can't give it 5 stars--I just didn't have that sense of "wow, I'm so lucky to be reading this book!" that I sometimes get. ALMOST there.
It's so easy to just dismiss it as shallow and full of traffic and posers and smog, and it IS all that, but there's also that sense of possibility that comes with not having a huge weight of history slapping you in the face every time you turn a corner. And those beautiful mornings that smell like flowers.
I loved how much this book brought me back to my childhood years in southern CA, with my parents' kooky friends who were into self-actualization as well as making lots of money. And in the background, that constant nebulous threat of nuclear war, which, at age 8 or so, I really had no idea what it meant, only that our president was BAD.
This was recommended to me as a "post-apocalyptic" novel, but really it's more pre-apocalyptic, with just a little bit of apocalypse at the end.
I highly recommend it, but I somehow can't give it 5 stars--I just didn't have that sense of "wow, I'm so lucky to be reading this book!" that I sometimes get. ALMOST there.
November 10, 2024
A novel with so much to say that it barely says anything. One is born along by the wonderfully manic prose narration — the interview I read in which see claims to write at a frantic pace, not revising at all in the first draft, lest she get bogged down in the process, makes perfect sense in reading, given the jocular, conversational, amphetamine affect of the prose, which is not quite the endorsement it sounds like, notwithstanding the nearly every-page treasures in the duration, where thoughts and ideas and scenes are played out in a just-mulling-it-over off-handedness that suitably masks the forthrightness of the polemic (save some of the more pointedly feminist sections in the second part).
We move through a world of 1980s affluence, greed, and heady liberation only mildly conscious of itself as such (and See’s own consciousness of the space at which she ends and her characters begin is itself worth a debate). As a speculative novel, golden days quite obviously is Lil interested in a conversation with or acknowledgement of the general conventions, expectations, and themes of the genre pool in which it is playing. I forget where I read it, but the truth of the statement is born out by this novel, that post apocalypse is the easiest speculative theme for mainstream writers to ape, given that it requires very little additive creation, and instead an ability to subtract things from the world with which they are familiar. Not a damning critique, and especially so because playing in that pool is not some thing that See herself is even vaguely interested in.
What she is interested in, though, is a question to which she thinks she has an answer. Whether she actually does, however, it’s not quite clear by a reading of the book. There are, as I’ve mentioned, the feminist undertones of the book, something she nicely counterposes against the general disinterest her main character has in social questions, to say nothing of her general racism and classism. And these interests in the life and lives of women are some of the more well-executed portions of the book, as in perhaps my favorite section, in which she narrates a day in the life of a random, cold, successful businessman in his own final weeks before oblivion.
We move through a world of 1980s affluence, greed, and heady liberation only mildly conscious of itself as such (and See’s own consciousness of the space at which she ends and her characters begin is itself worth a debate). As a speculative novel, golden days quite obviously is Lil interested in a conversation with or acknowledgement of the general conventions, expectations, and themes of the genre pool in which it is playing. I forget where I read it, but the truth of the statement is born out by this novel, that post apocalypse is the easiest speculative theme for mainstream writers to ape, given that it requires very little additive creation, and instead an ability to subtract things from the world with which they are familiar. Not a damning critique, and especially so because playing in that pool is not some thing that See herself is even vaguely interested in.
What she is interested in, though, is a question to which she thinks she has an answer. Whether she actually does, however, it’s not quite clear by a reading of the book. There are, as I’ve mentioned, the feminist undertones of the book, something she nicely counterposes against the general disinterest her main character has in social questions, to say nothing of her general racism and classism. And these interests in the life and lives of women are some of the more well-executed portions of the book, as in perhaps my favorite section, in which she narrates a day in the life of a random, cold, successful businessman in his own final weeks before oblivion.
November 4, 2022
I was gonna start with one of those trite, "Wow, this dystopic/post-apocalyptic novel rings SO true in today's climate!" and then give a few lines about how unseasonably warm it has been this fall, an Indian summer that has now lasted longer than the month of July. Then I started wondering whether there has been a story in the history of post-apocalyptic literature that does not resonate. Isn't the whole point of the genre to frighten and chasten?
Yet Golden Days comes from the 80s; in fact, not just the 80s but glitzy and glamorous LA in the 80s. It's primarily worried by nuclear fallout. It's covered in the gloss of a stock market that only goes up and up and the haze of a California real estate market where there's still room to buy in a tony canyon. For some it was a time of plenty and for others it was easier to imagine that their time of plenty might come soon, if they prayed or meditated or visualized or adopted a frugivore diet hard enough.
Today our concerns are different and our optimism dashed. Where Golden Days has an incredible before/after, today's fictional apocalypses feel more like Ling Ma's prescient Severance: a trajectory that continues dully, a steady decline more than a break.
Of course, Golden Days vaguely alludes to worsening conditions in its first 3/4 before disaster strikes. The protagonist, however, is inured to it, too focused on her own personal upward rise to notice the destruction around her. This first 75% of the novel, a chunky chunk of the story, is frenetic and punchy, written with an undeniable energy that begs you to dogear pages and underline passages, but it's also not very enjoyable as a narrative, resembling more so a set of interconnected monologues than any sort of plot.
Golden Days is a time capsule: I'm happy I unearthed it and read it and felt frightened and chastened and made my self-evident societal critiques, but beyond that, there's not much more to ponder.
Yet Golden Days comes from the 80s; in fact, not just the 80s but glitzy and glamorous LA in the 80s. It's primarily worried by nuclear fallout. It's covered in the gloss of a stock market that only goes up and up and the haze of a California real estate market where there's still room to buy in a tony canyon. For some it was a time of plenty and for others it was easier to imagine that their time of plenty might come soon, if they prayed or meditated or visualized or adopted a frugivore diet hard enough.
Today our concerns are different and our optimism dashed. Where Golden Days has an incredible before/after, today's fictional apocalypses feel more like Ling Ma's prescient Severance: a trajectory that continues dully, a steady decline more than a break.
Of course, Golden Days vaguely alludes to worsening conditions in its first 3/4 before disaster strikes. The protagonist, however, is inured to it, too focused on her own personal upward rise to notice the destruction around her. This first 75% of the novel, a chunky chunk of the story, is frenetic and punchy, written with an undeniable energy that begs you to dogear pages and underline passages, but it's also not very enjoyable as a narrative, resembling more so a set of interconnected monologues than any sort of plot.
Golden Days is a time capsule: I'm happy I unearthed it and read it and felt frightened and chastened and made my self-evident societal critiques, but beyond that, there's not much more to ponder.
March 3, 2014
One of the best books I've ever read. It's one of those "you have to read it to get it" type of novels. It's set in Los Angeles (Topanga Canyon) and takes us into the life of a divorcee with a knack for the jewelry trade who is trying to make ends meet servicing clients in Beverly Hills. She begins by carving out a niche business appraising jewelry for wives of wealthy men - and sometimes breaking the news when their husbands have gifted them zircons instead of diamonds. When disaster strikes, and I won't spoil it, the real story begins...
Enjoy the read, enjoy the discovery.....
Enjoy the read, enjoy the discovery.....
July 14, 2025
This was all over the place. I don’t know what to make of it. Like it was almost good but not quite? Might try it again someday.
July 3, 2015
Her eyes were wide. She gazed at me with terrific concentration. "Yes, she said, "I understand what you are saying. I get it. But isn't it true--that your fear of nuclear war is a metaphor for all the other fears that plague us today?"
My mind had never been exactly fine. But sometimes it has been good. "No," I said. I may have shouted it out through the beautiful, sheltered room. "It's my view that the other fears, all those of which we have spoken, are a metaphor for my fear of nuclear war."
The threat of nuclear annihilation seems in some ways a memory of a by-gone era. Back in the eighties, and especially in California we lived in the shadow of our many Air Bases that could go on alert at any time. At some point you just had to stop thinking about it. I suppose in some ways it is still very much there and real, but it seems much less in our faces than global warming or terrorist attacks or even just a gunman showing up one day. Or maybe those fears have just replaced that one.
This book is in some ways very strange. In the first 85% of the book our heroine is a divorced single mom making her way through a man's world in the California lifestyle of the eighties. She takes husbands and lovers, raises two daughters, creates a bank and teaches wealthy housewives how to invest and create their own wealth. She sees all the craziness of California excess and success in the form of pseudo religion and success gurus. We learn her views on men and feminism. We meet her best friend who eventually becomes one of those success hucksters. Carolyn See captures California wonderfully.
And then BOOM. 85% of the way in--the world ends.
Very unsettling book but the prose is wonderful. I hope the author Carolyn See was able to exorcise some of her own fears in this writing exercise.
I learned about this book from an article in the Guardian on Reading American cities: books about Los Angeles. It is also a part of a series of reprints from the University of California Press on California Fiction. All of the books included in the series have been selected for "their literary merit and their illumination of California history and culture."
My mind had never been exactly fine. But sometimes it has been good. "No," I said. I may have shouted it out through the beautiful, sheltered room. "It's my view that the other fears, all those of which we have spoken, are a metaphor for my fear of nuclear war."
The threat of nuclear annihilation seems in some ways a memory of a by-gone era. Back in the eighties, and especially in California we lived in the shadow of our many Air Bases that could go on alert at any time. At some point you just had to stop thinking about it. I suppose in some ways it is still very much there and real, but it seems much less in our faces than global warming or terrorist attacks or even just a gunman showing up one day. Or maybe those fears have just replaced that one.
This book is in some ways very strange. In the first 85% of the book our heroine is a divorced single mom making her way through a man's world in the California lifestyle of the eighties. She takes husbands and lovers, raises two daughters, creates a bank and teaches wealthy housewives how to invest and create their own wealth. She sees all the craziness of California excess and success in the form of pseudo religion and success gurus. We learn her views on men and feminism. We meet her best friend who eventually becomes one of those success hucksters. Carolyn See captures California wonderfully.
And then BOOM. 85% of the way in--the world ends.
Very unsettling book but the prose is wonderful. I hope the author Carolyn See was able to exorcise some of her own fears in this writing exercise.
I learned about this book from an article in the Guardian on Reading American cities: books about Los Angeles. It is also a part of a series of reprints from the University of California Press on California Fiction. All of the books included in the series have been selected for "their literary merit and their illumination of California history and culture."
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 3, 2009
This book touched me in such a deep way. It actually spoke to me. It spoke to who I am, how quirky I can be and it spoke to who I would like to be: without worry. In the plot of the book one thing sang to me constantly: the people who were facing supremely troubled times decided to either be happy or panic. Those who opted for happiness left convention and went to those they loved - regardless of how that love was defined or manifested. This concept alone made this book worth reading and loving. The female protagonist holds visions of her child running in good fabrics, in good light, in good times and this sustains her. I think this is a good thing to learn. If for no other reason I was glad to read this wonderful book just to reinforce that learning.
However, I loaned this book to someone.We were on vacation in Baja. When he finished the book he stood up from his lounge chair and used his baseball throwing arm to fling my book deep out into the saltwater! I loved it... obviously he did not feel the same way.
I searched for Carolyn See for years afterward. The book was not to be found. Finally I was able to replace it when it was reprinted recently. I still love it. Even after rereading it I can't understand why he thought the book needed to be put to a soggy death.
I still love it.
However, I loaned this book to someone.We were on vacation in Baja. When he finished the book he stood up from his lounge chair and used his baseball throwing arm to fling my book deep out into the saltwater! I loved it... obviously he did not feel the same way.
I searched for Carolyn See for years afterward. The book was not to be found. Finally I was able to replace it when it was reprinted recently. I still love it. Even after rereading it I can't understand why he thought the book needed to be put to a soggy death.
I still love it.
February 26, 2013
One of a number of novels written in the 1980s shaped by the possibility of the "unthinkable," i.e. wide-scale nuclear war that would mean the end of civilization. See seems almost Nietzschean in her belief that nuclear war could be the source of renewal — her portrait of latter-day American civilization, a wasteland characterized by relentless desires and even more relentless fears, may be more bleak than her rather graphic description of life after nuclear war.
August 18, 2012
I agree with many of the reviews here. A very bizarre book that took me on a wild ride. Parts of it were hateful. See's language was snappy and sometimes hard to follow. I finished it confused, surprised and intrigued. It made me want to read more of See's work but not right away. I need to recover from this one.
December 30, 2009
This is very good post-apocalyptic fiction. Set in southern California in the recent past.
May 16, 2010
What I learned: don't bother with New Age philosophy, brush up on Stone Age philosophy.
April 18, 2025
This book was somehow simultaneously frenetic and dully uneventful for most of it—until, of course, it wasn’t. But even the literal apocalypse came and went with such a bizarre lack of fanfare and mixed-up, backwards pacing that one could easily have missed it if they zoned out for the wrong moment. I knew how this book ended because it was assigned to me in college (I didn’t read it then, but we discussed it in class, so I found out the ending), but without that knowledge going into it, I would have been SO confused when the story took that turn. God, what a bizarre book. It’s all about women and how men are just kind of dull, useless accessories, yet the characters—ALL the characters—are the most vapid, hollow creatures I’ve ever come across anywhere. I struggled to relate to each and every one of them on every single page and couldn’t understand how a person could convey so VERY many different breeds of vapidity. I mean. Good god. The plot is…well, one can’t even really say there is one. It’s a rather bland accounting of the narrator’s life, but it jumps around in time without rhyme or reason so you’re always a little confused about where the present event falls in the chronology and how it connects to the rest of the story and WHY on EARTH it’s RELEVANT, and always, there’s the vague, ominous/effervescent allusion to the future, but if I didn’t already know that future was the nuclear apocalypse going into the book, I would’ve been ENTIRELY lost by those constant vagaries.
I found the post apocalyptic scene interesting in its simultaneous grim reality and blissful joy, which feels very real to me. The matter-of-fact attitude she takes to describing this time grounds it, despite its sense of unreality and confusion, all of which furthers the feeling of authenticity, as I suspect all of this would be very true of the close aftermath of surviving a nuclear apocalypse. The final 40 pages of this book were far and away the most worthwhile, interesting, and easy to read, but I’m not sure if I think it was worth the slog to get there. Even when she’s expressing philosophies I fundamentally agree with, there’s still something so hollow and superficial about everything she expresses that I struggle to take any of it seriously. I’m genuinely baffled by this juxtaposition. Perhaps it’s simply a limitation of my modern perspective against that of a woman who had to fight her way through a world that was intent on not taking her seriously. Maybe she can only couch things in vapidity as a defense mechanism against a world determined to undervalue her. I don’t know. I’ve rarely read a book that felt so shockingly far afield from everything I think and know. What an odd experience.
I found the post apocalyptic scene interesting in its simultaneous grim reality and blissful joy, which feels very real to me. The matter-of-fact attitude she takes to describing this time grounds it, despite its sense of unreality and confusion, all of which furthers the feeling of authenticity, as I suspect all of this would be very true of the close aftermath of surviving a nuclear apocalypse. The final 40 pages of this book were far and away the most worthwhile, interesting, and easy to read, but I’m not sure if I think it was worth the slog to get there. Even when she’s expressing philosophies I fundamentally agree with, there’s still something so hollow and superficial about everything she expresses that I struggle to take any of it seriously. I’m genuinely baffled by this juxtaposition. Perhaps it’s simply a limitation of my modern perspective against that of a woman who had to fight her way through a world that was intent on not taking her seriously. Maybe she can only couch things in vapidity as a defense mechanism against a world determined to undervalue her. I don’t know. I’ve rarely read a book that felt so shockingly far afield from everything I think and know. What an odd experience.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
November 10, 2025
I have tried hard to like Carolyn See’s fiction. Her memoir is great, but there is something about her novels, and I can’t put my finger on it exactly, that I don’t get and that rubs me the wrong way. Something in the tone? A not-so-endearing cynicism? A lack of curiosity on the part of the first person narrator in Golden Days. Jumps around too much and doesn’t coalesce. Unfunny. I had to work hard in nearly every paragraph to figure out what was going on, let alone what See is trying to say. Even when you reach a crest of narrative, who cares? And when will this be over? Hmph. So much work in crafting a novel so she gets stars for that.
September 29, 2017
So many things about this novel continue to ring true today: Los Angeles as a sprawling network of neighborhoods rich and poor, an unrelenting West Coast optimism borne out of the possibility to reinvent oneself--again and again--and an impending, vague threat of nuclear armageddon. This novel is timeless in a way I didn't expect it to be. Carolyn See weaves social commentary on everything from the American family dynamic to the subtle racial/economic undercurrents that have built the communities we call home.
April 12, 2024
Potentially my favorite Southern California book yet… The middle meandered frequently but the beginning and ending were excellent, and thus worth it. This could be described, not reductively, as a portrait of a people before and after catastrophe. Maybe they deserved it. But it’s done with dignity, dry wit, awareness of and play with the absurd. It’s LA: America, hyperbolically. So fun
February 9, 2015
Having recently read two other Carolyn See books (a memoir and a novel) I found this novel disappointing. Carolyn See has moments of brilliance in this book (including the last 30 pages), but for me, reading this relatively short novel was a bit of a slog. I am glad I didn't give up and stop reading it, because the last 30 pages were so worth it. I felt like See was trying to tell too many stories in this book, and all of them suffered as a result. One of the highlights of the book, as with the other two that I have read is the "California-ness" that they are infused with. As a fairly new Californian, I find that interesting and a little bit magical. But, I am afraid I will not be recommending this one.
May 5, 2013
Goes down easy for the first half or so, and then takes the surprising turn of becoming a post-apocalyptic fantasy. There is humor throughout, quite wry, in fact, even with the serious subject matter. It's about Southern California, and the narrator never quites takes anything completely seriously. I'll probably forget everything about this book within a year, but it was an interesting read. Can't remember how I came to it -- perhaps a Maureen Corrigan recommendation from NPR? She did a list of oldie-but-goodies.
April 27, 2014
If Thomas Pynchon had been born a woman, this might be what he would have sounded like, but without all of the Pynchonian craziness. See is much more grounded in her writing, but does take flights of fancy within reality. Although this book was written almost 30 years ago, it still feels incredibly relevant. Unlike anything I've read before but in an incredibly good way. High Feminism without male bashing.
July 17, 2014
2008
There is something about this book that draws me back again and again. Apocalyptic, full of wish-fulfillment, and somehow, really steeped in Californianess. Holds up well, as magical realism apocalyptic fairytale. Some of the images still haunt me.
And isn't it weird to look back at a time when I fully believed a nuclear holocaust was coming, would come, any day? I kind of wish I knew when that particular fear left me.
There is something about this book that draws me back again and again. Apocalyptic, full of wish-fulfillment, and somehow, really steeped in Californianess. Holds up well, as magical realism apocalyptic fairytale. Some of the images still haunt me.
And isn't it weird to look back at a time when I fully believed a nuclear holocaust was coming, would come, any day? I kind of wish I knew when that particular fear left me.
June 25, 2016
I wanted this book to end so badly, and it just would not. "Agonizingly protracted" is how I would describe it.
Although the jacket copy would suggest otherwise, only the last third of the story is about a nuclear war. The first two-thirds are Joan Didion Lite.
In summary: This book was not worth the time or expense (in library fines) it took to read it.
Although the jacket copy would suggest otherwise, only the last third of the story is about a nuclear war. The first two-thirds are Joan Didion Lite.
In summary: This book was not worth the time or expense (in library fines) it took to read it.
August 1, 2012
Read this for the first time many years ago and again several times since.
I love this book, along with See's later one, The Handyman. This is smart, funny, inspired fiction with a genuine beating heart.
I love this book, along with See's later one, The Handyman. This is smart, funny, inspired fiction with a genuine beating heart.
October 1, 2012
Interesting read. I almost didn't finish it but it has a bit of a payoff at the end. i heard about the book on NPR and was intrigued enough to find it at the library. I'm still digesting it. I think it definitely stays with you.
April 5, 2010
this is another one of those 'only four stars because it was so utterly terrifying' books. but don't let that stop you, it's also utterly brilliant.
October 31, 2012
This one was a hard read. At times, I was so drawn into the stream of consciousness meets end of the world fiction, but just as often I was completely confused. The ending was hopeful though.
November 19, 2012
This one rocked my world. I'm going to read it again over the turkey day break.
December 7, 2012
I really enjoyed this book, but it's bizarre and unsettling. Los Angeles seems to inspire a lot of hallucinogenic writing, and I am more than happy to read it because it feels like home.
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