foggy_rosamund 's review for:

The Golden Gate by Vikram Seth

3.0

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Set in 1980s San Francisco, this novel follows the lives of a group of twenty-somethings over the course of two years. The themes are not unique -- it's about love and loss, set against the background of possible nuclear war. The way Seth handles romance and relationships seems a little naive at times, perhaps because the characters are not all well-realised. But this is written in rhyming tetrameter, and that makes the novel extremely memorable. Some of the verse reads like doggerel, some of it is clumsy, and some of it is beautifully executed, but it's all interesting. I really enjoyed this structurally and spent time thinking about how it was composed, and I think it's well worth reading even if it can be clumsy at times. My favourites parts of this were when Seth went meta and asked himself why he was writing tetrameter and then insulted his critics -- very funny and tongue-in-cheek.