Golden Gate - V63

It is enough to share this unsigned sonnet that I found written by hand inside the copy of this fine novel that I signed out of the Toronto Public Library: Dear friend, don't be intimidated By this, a novel penned in verse: Perhaps you have anticipated That it will be obscure or worse -- Solemn, pretentious, and "poetic". Relax! You'll need no anaesthetic. Our author tells his tale with style And wit and charm. Before long, I'll Bet, you'll find yourself engrossed in Each stanza of this narrative Of love and lust, of take and give, Of modern times. Let's drink a toast in Honour of the nerve it took To publish this amazing book.

Vikram Seth has a brilliant style, where ordinary words, events and people stand up and potray emotions in delicate detail. His wit, and wordplay apart, this novel in verse is a fine story of love and loss. Once I read this novel, I found myself reading everything that the author has published yet. Each book written in a different style, and on different substance, Seth is both engrossing and endearing. I believe with Rushdie, Vikram Seth is perhaps the most erudite Indian writer in English of post-colonial world! Though unlike Rushdie, Vikarm speaks in soft and simple language, and addressing so many different styles (travel book, longest novel in English, poetry, novel in verse, novel set in 1950-60s India, novel set in San Fransisco, and London, and Tibet, etc) with such mastery is a mark of his genius.

San Francisco definitely comes alive in this novel in verse. After studying this truly remarkable city myself over the last two years , I realize how vividly he has captured the people and the places in this city - especially its "yuppiness" which I feel has only multiplied since the books writing. The story is about an educated,hip typically San Franciscan circle of friends and their highly entangled love affairs. It sometimes digresses into preaching about nuclear arms and its dangers but I guess it is justified as these issued were far more relevant in the 80s than now. The entire book - 300 pages or so written in delightfully rhyming verses is a pleasure to read and is extremely difficult to put down. I was afraid of missing some cleverly constructed rhymes the first time because of my eagerness to find out what happens next. This book deserves to be read twice to truly understand how good it is........

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 wh

£7.99 for a book of poetry (and sonnets at that!)I thought I was mad but it's been worth every penny. This is a novel that I'll read again and again. I finished it today in a single sitting. If your only experience of Vikram Seth is the first page of A Suitable Boy then throw away those misconceptions. California should be proud to have adopted this author. Here is a writer who has carried on where Amistead Maupin left off. The post-AIDS sexual machinations will leave you delighted, bemused or furious, but through-out the sonnets (and, in particular, the rhyming couplets) assure you that this is just after all a nursery rhyme for adults. Born too late to understand the CND/Peace movements of the 80s, I relished the several stanza long tract given by Father O'Hare vilifying nuclear weapons. All warmongers should be forced to read those pages!Incidentally, I have just sent an e-mail to a friend, thanking him for recommending this novel and to tell him my news. (I wrote it in seven sonnets!) Poetry not for you, you think? Give this one a go. You'll not regret it.