The Golden Gate

As a relative newcomer to the genre of verse novel, I can not recommend Vikram Seth's masterpiece enough. Taking the Pushkin sonnet to new heights, Seth gives his audience a snapshot into early 80s San Fransisco, the Cold War, nuclear research in America, and the very earliest days of the AIDS epidemic. Seeing not only a gay male character but a male bi-sexual character as well is extremely endearing as one who identifies as such. There is something at once preeminently timeless and classical about Seth's verse novel which should draw readers for generations. Never have I seen a poet use poetic formalism in such a conversational way as Seth does in his multi-Pushkin sonnet/stanza scenes. It boggles the mind to see such masterful craft at work. This verse novel defines the genre for a modern audience, and redefines the form first set forth in Alexander Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" nearly two hundred years ago. Please read this book and learn what poetry is capable of and its way of presenting life and love and identity.

For Vikram Seth's, The Golden Gate, a novel set in verse,I stayed up late and found it to be anything but terse.His style of writing, quite exciting, kept me in my seat.I found myself begin reciting to his funky beat.While not all styles of poetry are easily construed,his fluid verbal mastery was elegantly brewed.I knew I'd write, with keen insight, my thoughts in metered rhyme;although this isn't what he'd want, it's all I could opine.His story opens with the taleof John, a lonely single male,who's risen in the rank and filebut pines for one to walk the aisle.His empty life seems filled with strife,compelling him to find a wife.Now here comes Janet, once an ex,now just a friend (they don't have sex).She helps him rise above the fraywith sage support and, by the way,suggests he posts his personal,through which comes Liz, quite capableof keeping John from all that's dulland end his heart's persistent lull.Romance is lit, so now we flitto others in our growing skitof friends, lovers, sons and mothers,activists and nuclear druthers.All the while, the humor builds,injected by the writer's skills,not to distract from all the gloryof this now climactic story,but rather to have fun with styleand maybe just to make you smile.Through all the threads that Seth does weave,a tangled web of lives do cleavewhen, one by one, with damage done,our lovers break up; tears do run.The bigger picture that he paintswill make you see the many saintsthat linger in our lives each daybut ne'er we thank them, ne'er we say"I love you," until death may strayonto their path. They go awayand leave you crying as you prayfor one more chance, just one more way,to hold them, touch them, make them stay...In my conclusion, I will saythis gets five stars, without delay.Through Golden Gates do souls depart.In San Francisco lays my heart.

This book is one of a nearly extinct breed: a novel in verse. In that form lie its unique pleasures as well as its uncertain reception at some hands.The poet James Merrill, in his epic trilogy "The Changing Light at Sandover" has claimed that "forms what affirms". Does this mean that the satisfaction of the novel can only come if the line-breaks are reliably marginal? Linguists Whorf and Sapir have suggested that language constrains our thought - not so much in the realm of vocabulary as, again, in that of form. The radically different forms of, for instance, Hopi or Inuit constrain "what is relatively easy to say" and hence, what is said. Perhaps so. You'd expect that rhyming sonnets would constrain the voice of a novelist, but Vikram Seth has certainly shown here that is not necessarily the case. Chalk it up to a mastery of both form and story, though, not to versification. His technical skills extend to both realms.Moving, then, beyond form, we wonder about content of such a novel. Will the book wander (or waltz) into the deeply allegorical, the disconnected, the imagistic? After all, aren't those the consequences of poetic license? Have you read your Ashbery? Oddly, this poem is quite prosaic in that regard, it tells a tight, comprehensible story in a manner that is fluid but not embroidered. (By way of contrast, consider that you can easily find yourself spinning away in a vortex of magical metaphor in the latest Rushdie.) Novels, it would seem, are pretty much what we make of them. As one who has never really appreciated the modernist redesign of the novel, I found "The Golden Gate" to be a much more satisfying story - notwithstanding its several-hundred sonnets.The book is a well-textured story about a number of folks living their lives and relationships - apparently in the 80's. (Some reviewers have made much of the story's use of timestamped phraseology such as the use of "yuppie" and the like. Perhaps. But I'd imagine that the term "Okie" was equally a well-understood, sometimes overloaded, term of the 30's which we, nevertheless, can comfortably accept from Steinbeck.) The lives, loves and trials of these folks are presented with the careful painting and pacing of Anne Tyler and J. R. Lennon.Seth's verse in this book has been called "masterful". It is, indeed. Consider that the odd rhyme is hardly ever at hand for most of us, much less available when called upon, as he was, thousands of times. But Seth is more than a rhymer - something I noticed by contrast. I'm pretty sure the sonnet scheme he uses is the so-called "Pushkin rhyme." I only know this since I just struggled through a marginal translation of "Eugene Onegin" and noticed the similarity. But the sing-songy'ness of the Pushkin was gladly lacking in the Seth. He uses true poetic craft, line breaks and punctuation and word choice, to allow the reader to flow between a fluid, songlike verse and a more prosaic tale-telling. In other words, he uses the strengths of both forms when they serve, best, the needs of the work and the reader.So. Don't be afraid of the form. But also don't expect it to seem natural unless you have seen it before. I came to this book via a recommendation of Tom Disch in his essays in "The Castle of Indolence" (a 5-star plug there), and from a background in having sought out and read quite a number of long poems, epic poems and verse novels.If you taste this book more out of curiosity than experience, good for you! But grant yourself the time to bounce through the first dozen sonnets in the singy-songy phrasing that so many of us learned to be necessarily poetic many years ago. Then, as the story captures you, you will notice that the verse, with the help of Seth's subtle crafting, both lifts and disappears beneath the story. I'll read it again, and again.

This novel in verse came highly reccommended to me. At first I was apprehensive about reading it (I have never considered myself to appreciate poetry) and found it hard to get through. I picked it up for a second time after reading 2 of Seth's other novels (An Equal Music and then A Suitable Boy, which are now two of my favorite books) and this time found it hard to resist. The verse was charming and really enhanced the story. It made the novel fun to read and the characters and plot exciting.Seth is now my favorite author and I'm always trying to get people to give his novels a chance. I feel that Seth is an underdiscovered author and nothing would make me happier than sharing the discovery of his amazing talent with others.

Amazing work great story

This is a basic romance story with very little character development. In fact I found most of the characters unlikable and the cat was probably the most interesting. There is an unpleasant homophobic undertone which hasn't dated well but again I cant really whinge too much about that, for a book published in the 80s.But lets face it this book is not famous as a work of descriptive literature. It is famous because (As if you didn't know), its written entirely in rhyme. Onegin Sonnets to be exact.This is very clever. The sonnets are very good, and its very impressive how much detail can be conveyed. I am not for one second detracting from Mr Seth's brilliance in that respect. But no matter how clever it is, it still feels like a gimmick and not enough to dress a whole book in.Buy it, read it, and boast about reading it to your mates. Kind of like Ulysses, only much easier and more enjoyable.

A novel stretching over 300 plus pages written in tetrameters - which generally move swiftly, can surprise us with unexpected rhymes, yet prove able to sustain a wide variety of moods. And then there's the story of John, Phil, Liz, Ed, Jan and friends, which contains much of psychological acuity and keeps us guessing as to the next plot development. And finally there's also the serious content here - the novel's also set in the 1980s when it was written and several of the players are serious campaigners for nuclear disarmament as well as finding their ways through a complex love life.Overall quite a remarkable achievement

I originally picked this book up from a library on a whim, thinking that it might be an interesting experiment. I then pretty much read it from cover-to-cover without stopping! Such is the fluidity of the verse and the beauty of the language that you cannot help but be carried away by the rhythm.Not many books have the power to make you smile, think, laugh and cry but I defy anyone not to shed a tear as the final chapter begins.I've now bought six copies of this owing to the fact that I keep telling people they should read it and then have to combat their scepticism by lending them my copy which I never see again.This book really is a thing of beauty and should be essential reading not just for Seth fans but for anyone who enjoys the written word.

Clever, and very readable - the rythmic and rhyming structure is only occasionally noticeable and that's because it's really clever. The rest of the time, this simply reads as an engaging and interesting story about a set of characters I warmed to.

Found this book enjoyable however I felt that often the writing came second to the rhyme scheme which sometimes detracted from it. It felt sometimes forced and read like it was written by somebody who spoke English as a second language.