Joan London is a bookseller and author living in Perth. She is the award-winning author of two short story collections and three novels, including Gilgamesh (Atlantic, 2004) and The Good Parents (Atlantic, 2010).
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Joan London
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This slim, potent novel takes place in the nineteen-fifties in Australia, in a convalescent home for children with polio. Frank, thirteen years old, spends his days longing for his fellow-patient Elsa, sharing covert smokes with the gardener, and writing poems on prescription...— The New Yorker, Nov 15 2016![]()
Every character, however minor, comes to life in these pages. Like her fictional pianist, London is a virtuoso.— Kirkus, Nov 15 2016![]()
Seen one way, Frank Gold is unfortunate: he and his parents are from Hungary but are now “New Australians,” victims of World War II—refugees, displaced people, survivors—that Australia prides itself on having taken in. Nearly 13, he is a polio victim relearning how to...— Puublishers Weekly, Nov 15 2016![]()
Meyer and Ida Gold flee Hungary during World War II and find themselves in Perth, Australia, with their son, Frank. They hope to start a new life, but everything comes apart when Frank contracts polio. In 1954, he is sent to recover in a pub converted into a convalescent home...— Historical Novel Society, Nov 2 2016![]()
Hungarian WWII refugees adjust to life in Australia in London's luminous novel of survival, love, hope, and sex. Frank Gold, poet and teenage polio victim, falls in love with fellow patient Elsa at the Golden Age Children's Polio Convalescent Home. London sees past exteriors...— Publisher's Weekly, Oct 30 2016![]()
One of the reasons that I love reading fiction is that so many times I am transported to a place and time in history that is completely unknown to me. I learn through the characters what it was like to live during that era. Joan London’s book, “The Golden Age” was...— Emissourian, Oct 20 2016![]()
Where has Joan London been all my life? In Perth, Australia, apparently, at the outer edge of the earth, and completely off my radar. Which is a shame, because her third novel, “The Golden Age” — which takes its name from a pub-turned-convalescent home for children recovering...— Forward, Oct 2 2016![]()
Joan London’s The Golden Age is a quiet novel about a frightening time in the 1950s when, instead of fun and freedom, summer came to mean fear and isolation as pools were closed and children kept inside the house in the hopes of avoiding the dreaded polio. The Golden Age is...— The Gilmore Guide to Books, Sep 16 2016![]()
Both Joan London’s previous novels – Gilgamesh and The Good Parents – stand out for me as fine examples of clean, elegant writing, free of unnecessary ornament. Both also share the theme which runs through The Golden Age: the plight of the outsider, or in this case, outsiders.— A life in books, Sep 2 2016![]()
A, based on 3 reviews WHAT THE REVIEWERS SAY "The Golden Age is the rare novel that makes its reader want to cry at almost every single page, but manages to be uplifting at the same time... The novel’s passages about both the war and the disease are spare...— Lit Hub, Sep 1 2016![]()
Joan London’s characters attempt to shape a communal present as Australia absorbs the effects of the polio epidemic that terrorised parents in the 1950s— The Irish Times, Sep 1 2016![]()
Joan London’s The Golden Age is the rare novel that makes its reader want to cry at almost every single page, but manages to be uplifting at the same time. It’s about Frank, a young polio patient and budding poet in Western Australia who is also a survivor of World War II,...— Flavorwire, Aug 17 2016![]()
THE GOLDEN AGE, by Joan London. An Australian novelist little known in this country, London sets her story at a children’s polio hospital in Western Australia of the 1950s. There, Frank Gold — a Holocaust survivor who emigrated with his parents — falls in love with Elsa...— Newsday, Aug 17 2016![]()
This is a book I read all in one sitting because I just didn’t want to stop.— Reading Rock Books, Aug 16 2016![]()
After World War II, A Hungarian family moves to Australia. When the son Frank comes down with polio, he goes to a children’s hospital called The Golden Age. There, he discovers poetry and falls for Elsa, another patient. His story intertwines with his family and nurse’s in...— Flavorwire, Aug 3 2016
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