Kenneth Grahame

The Golden Age Annotated Kenneth Grahame

Frank Gold is almost 13, and although he is small for his age he is independent, resourceful, a bit of a liar, indifferent to rules; he has also been struck down by polio. His curiosity sustains him. When he is moved to the Golden Age, a children's hospital, to recuperate, he soon asserts his detachment. Before that, when he first became ill, he had been sent to a large hospital on the outskirts of Perth. Most of the patients there were young single adults; he was the youngest. Whizzing about in his wheelchair, he chased nurses and carried messages. He was, for a while, "mascot, cupid, little brother". Somehow during all this activity he also "felt a hunger to know why he was alive". Frank is no ordinary boy, and he knows it.