Golden Days (California Fiction) [Paperback]

Carolyn See (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0520206738 | ISBN-13: 978-0520206731 | Publication Date: October 6, 1996

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.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

See, who is the author of three previous, rather quiet, sensitive novels, a partner in the authorship of blockbuster pop sagas (Lotus Land, 110 Shanghai Roadp and an admired Los Angeles Times book reviewer, has found an entirely new voice for her most current novel, a breakout if ever there was one. Her publisher mentions Joan Didion, Anne Tyler and Nora Ephron, but none quite evokes the wry yet deeply felt and devastatingly feminine tone she has caught in Golden Daysrather as if John Cheever had changed gender and moved to California. There is Cheever's intense sense of place (Los Angeles instead of exurban Connecticut), of the passage of time and of the enormities that gape just below the surface of life in this tale of a breezy middle-aged woman coming to terms with life, men and, ultimately, nuclear war. Some of the material sounds familiar: marriage in the early 1960s to dreadfully wrong men, the depth and power of female friendship over the years, the California self-realization movement (for once, not satirized but quirkily affirmed) and, finally, the darkening into the 1980s and the coping with unimaginable nuclear horrors. But it has all been felt and thought afresh, and with startling sudden insights on nearly every page: on the way childhood memories linger, why men make war, how favorite restaurants somehow attain symbolic stature. A chapter that inhabits the mind of a philandering husband is uncanny in its accuracy and sadness. And the closing pages offer a vision of nuclear apotheosis and human survival utterly unlike anything in contemporary literature. Golden Days offers the excitement of discovering what seems like a brand-new talent, but enriched by a sureness of tragicomic touch that could only be the work of an experienced writer striking into bold new territory. 30,000 first printing; $25,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

At 38, Edith Langley starts over in Los Angeles, with two bad marriages behind her, two daughers beside her, and the notion that money is power. She's soon a financial advisor, dressing only in natural fabrics and buying gems and gold for the future. But Edith is a woman in a man's world, as See makes abundantly clear. Older financier Howard "Skip" Chandler, who becomes Edith's friend, housemate, and eventual lover, puts together the money for a bank and makes her its president. Young con man-evangelist Lion Boyce (whom she meets on assignment for her financial column) spouts a powerful brand of positive thinking that changes Edith's life. There are "golden days" among the rich and powerful, until nuclear disaster occurs (also courtesy of men). See has a sharp eye for the California scene, and her smooth, dry style is a pleasure, but the plot is diminished by a lack of focus. Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 196 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press (October 6, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520206738
• ISBN-13: 978-0520206731
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #989,271 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Newly Relevant, November 11, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Golden Days (California Fiction) (Paperback)

I first read this book when the cold war was still on, Ronald Reagan was president, and we were all afraid of Nuclear War. At the time, I found it one of the most intense, significant, but also funny and wonderful books I had ever read.
Since then, I have thought about it occassionally, and even once picked it up -- but it seemed sort of dated.
But now, ever since September 11, I can't stop thinking about it. I've read it again, and I have been recommmending it to everyone I know. All of a sudden, it couldn't be more pertinent, more important. Now, more than ever, we need to be reminded of a different kind of vision than the one's we see on CNN or read in the New York Times -- and this is just the book to do it.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars West Coast Charm and Adult Developmental Issues, June 10, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Golden Days (California Fiction) (Paperback)

The first two thirds of the book should be a joy to women who have had real relationships and professional careers, and survived after having lost such. The last third is chilling because of the 'bomb theme'. I suspect negative reviews are generated by people under 30 who simply haven't lived much (yet). Plus it might be hard to appreciate the tone of consumer excess and obsession if you never lived in California or a major metropolitan area.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating book, May 3, 2005

By 

DMU (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Golden Days (California Fiction) (Paperback)

A fascinating book--in part because you know, from reading the inside book jacket synopsis and the hints in the narrative, that this will be a book about nuclear war. But the war doesn't happen until 5/6 of the way in...and up until that point, it's a book about a lot of things: female friendship, love, hope, fear, California. In our current time of irony and sarcasm, it was both refreshing, and a little difficult at first, to completely stay with the narrator as she begins to believe a self-help guru's spiel about light, positive energy, and how what you believe will come true. In the final portion of the book though, which describes what happened after the nuclear war - all the self help speak becomes incredibly moving, and the novel really deepened for me. The book relies a lot on voice, and sometimes I wished there could be more fully developed scenes, but there's enough specific imagery and beautiful details here and there to keep you grounded. The beginning and middle can be slow-going at times, but beneath the slowness is this incredible build-up of tension as the war nears. Written in 1986, some of the personal anger towards men seems old-fashioned in some regards--but seen in the context of an approaching nuclear war, which the narrator believes (probably true) will be caused by men, her anger becomes convincing and justifiable.