The Golden Gate

Rating:
Summary: Annoying
Review: I had to read this for a course in Asian-American literature, and I found it to be a difficult book to read. I kept tying to put the verses into sentences to make it easier to read. I had to keep putting the book down because it was so annoying!

Rating:
Summary: It brings out the poet inside you
Review: I have read this book three times and its been as refreshing every time. An excellent book for a person with a taste in romance and poetry, although I do not agree with Seth's pessimistic philosophy that passionate relationships never end up in happily married ever after! The best part about this book is that once you finish reading this book, you tend to write in verses yourself!

Rating:
Summary: Superb, sheer delight
Review: I read this book in a single sitting. It was quite unbelievable how well Seth captured the ethos of the yuppiedom of San Francisco and environs. After a while, I actually forgot that it was written in sonnet form, I just got carried away!

Rating:
Summary: A most enchanting tale that never can go stale
Review: I'd heard a lot about 'The Golden Gate' & when I picked it up at the library I was rather sceptical as to whether I'll ever read it. To my surprise I finished the book within 24 hours. The verses far from being lugubrious, as I always tend to think of poetry, brought the characters to life more than prose can ever do. John, Liz, Jan, Phil & Ed were not fictious characters, they were real people. I found myself sharing John's loneliness, his subsequent passionate love for Liz & an equally passionate hatred for her pet, Charlemange, his political beliefs, his shock when he discovers his friends homosexual tendencies, his anger at being jilted, his renewed relation with Jan, his despair, Liz's confused state of mind, Phil's agitation at Ed's irrationality and finally the tragic end. The book also gave me an insight to a homosexual relationship & I felt something I never thought I'd ever feel, viz. an empathy with a homosexual lover. I was, far from being revolted, immensely touched by the ironic end to t

Rating:
Summary: Style over Substance
Review: I'm pretty sure this book wasn't written for the 'average' reader, and that's OK. However, if you're not particularly fond of poetry or accustomed to reading it, this book seems like an exercise in style, and not much else.
The big problem with the story is the characters: They're cliché and boring. To his credit, Seth does manage to paint a decent picture of the San Francisco Bay Area with it's stereotypical people, but after reading the first few chapters and realizing that the main character was a blah 20-something tech-yuppie pretty boy who acted like he was having a mid-life crisis, I pretty much lost interest (Like, I should feel bad for this spoiled dork?!). Then he threw in a bunch of stereotypical San Francisco characters ([...] Guy, Asian Artist-girl, mellow Wine-Country Guy etc) and went absolutely nowhere interesting with it. It's as if Seth wanted to write about the city of San Francisco, but having just moved there he didn't know anybody interesting, so instead he took a bunch cardboard characters and wrote a boring upper-middle-class soap opera. One reviewer claimed this was `satire', yeah, right.

I fully agree with another reviewer who recommended Amistead Maupin's Tales of the City over this.




Rating:
Summary: A Tribute To The Golden Gate
Review: Imitation is, they say, the best
Form of flattery. And so my
Short and humble poem does attest
To my having heaved a sad sigh
On the last page: No more Golden Gate!
Oh What a genius, that Vikram Seth!
He wrote of friendship, love, and life,
Betrayals, love affairs, and strife.
Sex, politics, and other issues-
Yet all the while maintaining rhyme.
So read this book, its worth the time.
Its sad; you might just need some tissues.
If you liked my rhyme even a bit
Hear this: Compared to Vik's its ...!

Rating:
Summary: An astounding marriage of fiction with diction
Review: It is a treatise, one might call it novel/ An exposition of pure originality./ Mouthing its verses, the reader will/ Be lifted from the doldrums of banality./ The cast - John, Phil, Ed, Liz, and Jan/ Along with the cats, they surely can/ Exhibit emotions: loneliness, lilting hearts/ Abetted in good measure by the iguana Schwartz./ San Fransisco is where this commentary/ Unfolds and reveals. A real eye-opener/ For someone like myself, a foreigner/ About places and people I've yet to see./ Still doubt the author? - he's Vikram Seth/ The title, my friends, is "The Golden Gate"./

Rating:
Summary: This amazing book
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: A fun book
Review: It kind of seems like Dr. Suess for grown ups, and you tend to talk in rhyme when you put the book down, but the Golden Gate is an interesting book. My poetry club read the book and we all agreed that we very interested in seeing how it ends.

Rating:
Summary: Outstanding novel; outstanding language
Review: It's unfortunate that many people probably won't even give this book a chance, just because it's written in poetry. It contains some of the most breathtakingly beautiful verse that I have encountered, but that's just a start. I have reread it 3 times and each time I can't get through the final stanza without my eyes flooding with tears. Multiple plot lines, sensitive subject matter, some politics, some gentle handling of human relationships.
This would be in my list of the top novels of the last 20 years