Jane Sullivan interviews author Joan London for "The Age" as her new novel, The Good Parents, is released.
London's much-acclaimed first novel, Gilgamesh, was about journeys. The Good Parents is a rich, multi-faceted novel about escapes: the running away we all have to do from our parents, however good or bad they were to us. It might be an odd theme to choose at a time when, largely for economic reasons, children are choosing to live with their parents way beyond adolescence. But one way or another, London says, the escape must be made.I can certainly recommend her previous novel, Gilgamesh, which was shortlisted for the 2002 Miles Franklin Award."Each generation has to make itself anew," she says on the phone from her home in Fremantle. "We're absolutely formed by the parenting generation, but we have to break away." And that applies whether the parents are old-school authoritarians or the new breed of mums and dads who respect their children as individuals with their own rights.
