A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year: During WWII, a Jewish boy copes with a new homeland, a polio diagnosisâand falling in love for the first time.
Frank Goldâs family, Hungarian Jews, have fled the perils of World War II for the safety of Australia, but not long after their arrival, thirteen-year-old Frank is diagnosed with polio. He is sent to a sprawling childrenâs hospital called the Golden Age, where he meets Elsa, the most beautiful girl he has ever seen, a girl who radiates pure light.
Soon, Frank and Elsa fall in love, fueling one anotherâs rehabilitation, facing the perils of illness and adolescence hand in handâand scandalizing the prudish staff of the Golden Age. Their parents, meanwhile, are coping with their own challenges. Elsaâs mother must reconcile her hopes and dreams with the reality of her daughterâs sickness. Frankâs parents are isolated newcomers in a country they do not love and that does not seem to love them back. Frankâs mother, a renowned pianist in Hungary, refuses to allow the western deserts of Australia to become her home. But her husband slowly begins to free himself from the past and integrate into a new society.
A winner of multiple literary awards in Australia, The Golden Age is a deeply moving novel about hardship and resilience that âgraciously captures young love in a quiet and beautifully sculpted story that is easily devoured in one sittingâ (Library Journal).
âPoetic intensity suffuses the novel . . . Resisting easy sentimentality, [it] presents polio rehabilitation as a metaphor for postwar recovery.â âThe New Yorker
âBeautiful.â âThe Dallas Morning News
âThe Golden Age is pretty much perfect.â âPublishers Weekly (starred review)