I was expecting to enjoy this book, but even so it really knocked my socks off.

Total times I missed my bus stop as a result of this book and had to walk home from Bosworth and Mission: 2.

Total times I have ever missed that bus stop: 3.

That will tell you how involved I got reading this book. Seth is a charming writer. The characters were fully-fleshed-out and interesting to read about, the places were very real (as a Bay Area resident, it was very exciting to see places like the Cafe Trieste show More...

This book was fabulous - imagine an entire novel written in verse! How could you? when I started, I couldn't imagine that I would finish it. But Seth does such a fabulous job with the rhyme scheme, with choices of words, and with the story itself that I couldn't put it down. It actually worked best when my wife and I took turns reading it aloud to one another. Then you can really "hear" the poetry in it as well as enjoy the story.

Seth said that he was inspired by Eugene Onegin by Pushkin - using More...

To write a contemporary love story, intertwining the lives of 6 people that you and me can completely relate to, and delving deep into their everyday lives, struggles, loves and lamentations...and to be able to do this entirely using sonnets and poetry....simply UNBELIEVABLE! This poem/story/work of fiction is a must read for anyone that thought poerty is hard to read or too hard to understand. The simple language, yet strong prose makes this book a delightful, magical read. You'll fall in love More...

Quite possibly, this book is why I'm married to the person I married.

The novel presents a daunting challenge to readers, because it consists of sonnets - 14 lines per, babe. I recall that Seth doesn't adhere closely to iambic pentameter, which is fine - there's a good tradition of poets being flexible with verse. (See Shakespeare, William.)

This is a book of love and loss, friendship and loss, and San Francisco.

What a surprise to discover this gem, over twenty-five years after its original publication. Unique and breath-taking, written entirely in verse, this novel was inspired by Russian poet Alexander Pushkin's novel Eugene Onegin, also written entirely in verse. Set in 1980's San Francisco rather than Pushkin’s Imperial Russian cities of 1820’s St. Petersburg and Moscow, The Golden Gate is written by Vikram Seth, author of the highly regarded A Suitable Boy.

Despite being skeptical going in, I was q More...

I read A Suitable Boy years ago and loved it. Because I did, I then read An Equal Music, which I liked a lot. But knowing Seth's first novel, this one, was in verse, I put it off. If I'd remembered it, after reading its inspiration, Eugene Onegin, I may have read it sooner, but at least the mention of ASB by a non-GR friend got me to take this out of the library.

It took a little while to get into the rhythm, so to speak, but once I did, it was smooth sailing. (I was even dreaming in rhymed sente More...

I got this book as a gift and was honestly a bit wary at first because the concept—a novel told entirely in sonnets!—seemed a bit hokey and pretentious to me. But in general it's really quite lovely and clever, even if the plot is a bit thin (with the exception of one incredibly shocking moment toward the end). Plus, Seth captures the feel of the Bay Area really well. You were right, dear gift-giver!

Anyone who can write an entire novel in sonnet form in this day and age and still weave a story that taps into the complex core of the heart and love is, simply put, amazing.

Completely unique book, as far as I know the only major verse novel written in English during the last 100 years. The life and loves of a bunch of 80s yuppies in Silicon Valley, told in Petrarchan sonnets. It should be a catastrophe, but in fact it's a brilliant success - funny, romantic, tragic, witty, you name it.

"To make a start more swift than weighty
Hail Muse. Dear Reader, once upon
A time, say, circa 1980,
There lived a man. His name was John..."

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This is my favorite novel. I discovered it by way of Douglas Hofstadter's "Le Ton Beau de Marot" (a non-fiction treatise on translating the untranslatable, which is pretty amazing on its own). "The Golden Gate" had me hooked from the Table of Contents. The whole novel is written in verse -- as a series of sonnets, in the style of Aleksandr Pushkin's iambic tetrameter stanzas in the Russian classic novel in verse, "Eugene Onegin." Instead of wealthy Russians of the early 1800s, the characters and More...

Vikram Seth is best known for A Suitable Boy but seven years earlier he wrote, The Golden Gate, a novel about life in and around San Francisco, done as more than one hundred sonnets. I read the book for its location and it's unusual narrative approach.

As poetry, each sonnet stands along fine. Each one is a snippet, a little window into life in San Francisco from the turbulent 1970s midway through the consumer driven 1980s. As a slice of Americana, the book is feeling dated. It relies too heavily More...

I thought the book was an achievement simply both for being in verse throughout and making sense! That apart, it's a story that is constantly told in plain language in a lot of books that have been written: dealing mainly with themes of loneliness, the search for lasting relationships, betrayal and forgiveness.

It deals with different types of people in the same set of friends too(very conveniently): John-the smart,ambitious, lonely, rigid guy; Phil- Silicon Valley employee turned firebrand acti More...

I re-read THE GOLDEN GATE last week, because I found it as I unpacked the last box of stuff from my most recent house move. Of course, I already knew that I loved it: I remembered that much. But I had forgotten just how much and how intensely I felt for this verse novel.

The fact that it is a successful novel written entirely in sonnet form, is remarkable in itself. Vikram Seth manages to sustain smooth, flowing dialogue within the confines of the form and delivers a poignant story of love and l More...

When my friend at work loaned me this book I wasn't sure what to think. I didn't realize it was all in verse until after he handed it to me, then it was too late...

Starting it was tough, but it didn't take too many stanzas before I began to enjoy it.

It's a good story, following some yuppies in the mid-80's near San Francisco. Several of them are college friends who don't keep in close touch as work, marriage, divorce and all that stuff keeps them too busy for each other. Others they meet in the More...

Here's one of those Goodreads non-reviews in which the author uses a Great Work of Literature as a platform to talk about himself. Ready? Here goes:

When I was a high school student in Palo Alto, I used to go to Printer's Ink Bookstore Cafe on California Ave to visit my friend Gregory, who had a job slinging coffee there.

Blah blah blah, personal anecdote et cetera. The point is: there were many regulars at this place. One of them was Vikram Seth. I believe he describes the coffee bar in one of t More...

I reread this book every five years or so, and I always do it when nobody is around because, really, I look like an idiot when I cry in public, and the last chapter of this book does it to me every time.

This is a novel about San Francisco in the 80s, written completely in verse. The plot is fairly simple. It's a little soap opera about a few friends looking for love, success, and their places in the world. However, it's all written in what I'll call Onegin stanzas, that tetrameter sonnet form Pu More...

A novel in sonnets? Would I take up a daunting challenge to read a book written entirely in sonnets? Doubtfully and apprehensive I picked up the book. It felt paradoxical for it was I who had suggested reading the book at a group read with a passionate fervour. Thus began a could-have-been-rueful reading but changed to one of the best-read books!

Dysfunctional lives are connected in a silent battle of love and friendship through rhyming words. I could so well connect to the yuppie life-detached More...

I was so disappointed with the ending of this novel in verse (yes, verse). The best part, I thought, came right before the plot takes a tragic turn, when two people begin to quietly and casually fall back into love under the guise of friendship. It felt like a healing of wounds that were then torn open again by what comes next. I love that Seth self-deprecatingly slips in a proxy for himself in the guise of Kim Tarvesh, the befuddled and blue economics PhD.

Written in sonnets, and written in absolutely stunningly beautiful sonnets. The plot is nice and I was interested in what would happen next, but I mainly read it for the poetry. Which is marvellous. The fact that this book has been written by a non-native English speaker is downright incredible. I love how the about-the-author, thank yous and whatnot are all written in sonnets, too.

I wish I was gifted enough to write my review as a sonnet.

To state the obvious, Seth is a renowned genius. However, most readers seem to base this judgment on his 1500-page opus, A Suitable Boy, whereas I’m one of those who would say this book, published some seven years earlier, is truer proof. The number to marvel at here is 690 – and it’s sonnets, not pages. Yes, sonnets. And this is not a book of poetry; it’s fiction. Read out this excerpt:

John stands beside his phone, recalling Janet’s warm beauty, smiling calm, her dark eyes, high-boned features,

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A fantastic and virtuosic writing feat, "The Golden Gate" follows the lives of a group of people in their twenties living in San Francisco and searching for love, successful relationships, and happiness. The book is written in verse, which at first seemed like it would interfere with the storytelling, but instead serves beautifully as the form by which Seth breathes life into these characters. The book is tender, lyrical, lovely, and tragic and the you really get invested in the lives of these p More...

SUMMARY: A young, 26 year old John has everything under control. His life is going great: he's successful, he has two close friends, yet why does he feels empty. John seeks counsel from his artistic ex-girlfriend Janet, and he finds a lover: Liz Dorathy and they adore each other. After Liz moves in, however, things may not be as easy as John expected...

Paul, John's best friend from college is struggling as a single father. One night he meets Ed Dorathy (Liz's brother!) at a party and falls for More...

Really good! An entire and mostly non-fiction semi-autobiographical novel written in verse! Not as distracting as you'd think, and really impressive how he manged to do a full length novel in this form. Interesting to read just as a piece of experimental writing, but actually quite good also in the narrative department. Well recommended.

I claimed I didn't like poetry until my ex-bf made me read this. It's a fantastic epic poem about several couples (one gay, I think) in modern(ish) day San Francisco. Seth has an incredible and enviable vocabulary and, to bank on that cliche, he makes writing verse seem easy.

A story of friendship and love written as a series of well-rhyming sonnets, this novel by Seth offers a unique and rewarding experience, one that you'd remember for the rest of your life. Though the book looks intimidating at the outset, things become well and easy after the first couple of sonnets. In fact, by the middle of it, not only was I reading the book in a sing-song rhyme, but also everything else I was reading, including my chats!

Would have given this a three for the story and the nar More...

Note: this is actually one sustained story, not a collection of poems. This is my #1 favorite book for both "literary" and personal reasons. It's beautifully written. The characters became a part of my life. I can't say enough good things about this book.

I took this one in in two gulps, so as to speak. Initially I thought it would be more of a rambling assortment of poetry based visually in and around San Francisco, but it turned out to be a coherent novel, which deals with homosexuality, yuppies, anti-nuke hippies and emotional entanglements of various sorts. A bold experiment which threatens to fail as the author transparently reveals his anxiety with regards to its completion, often breaking the fourth wall though the pretense is rather trans More...

I did not find real depth of thought or anything shocking in its content. Rewrite it in prose and it will be a fairly honest memoir of the 80's in Frisco (which is a fairly wild guess for me, who has never sailed to that part of the globe). But the style of the composition is so amusing, and the verses are so well-written in their exotic Onegin-metrics (sounding so familiar to the Russian ear), that it becomes a gem of easy reading. I read it aloud to my wife.

Probably there is a certain kind of More...

I'm glad that someone wrote this book, and I'm glad that I read it. I had a professor once who told me that a "fatal flaw" was not just one's tragic flaw, but rather the thing that makes you great AND simultaneously is your undoing. I have never found evidence to back up her claim, but I still love the idea and hope that it's true. Anyway, that's how I feel about this novel. I think the book got a lot of attention, rightfully so, for the fact that it's written entirely in verse. It's really impr More...

The Golden Gate is Vikram Seth’s first novel. It is set in the eighties in California and tells of twenty-somethings: John, Phil, Janet, Liz, Paul, Claire, Sue, Ed, Rose, Chuck, Matt, Joan, Bjorn, Mike, Rowena and Schwartz, who are looking for love, pleasure and the meaning of life. Witty, funny and moving, the whole novel, from Acknowledgements, through Dedication, tablet of Contents, the body of the novel and even About the Author are all cleverly written in verse. This delightfully different More...