--- product_id: 273670504 title: "The Golden Gate" price: "€ 29.41" currency: EUR in_stock: true reviews_count: 10 url: https://www.desertcart.at/products/273670504-the-golden-gate store_origin: AT region: Austria --- # The Golden Gate **Price:** € 29.41 **Availability:** ✅ In Stock ## Quick Answers - **What is this?** The Golden Gate - **How much does it cost?** € 29.41 with free shipping - **Is it available?** Yes, in stock and ready to ship - **Where can I buy it?** [www.desertcart.at](https://www.desertcart.at/products/273670504-the-golden-gate) ## Best For - Customers looking for quality international products ## Why This Product - Free international shipping included - Worldwide delivery with tracking - 15-day hassle-free returns ## Description The Golden Gate [Seth, Vikram] on desertcart.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. The Golden Gate Review: Anne Tyler walzing with Pushkin... a surprise, a delight - 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. Review: My Review of The Golden Gate, In Verse - 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 tale of John, a lonely single male, who's risen in the rank and file but 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 fray with sage support and, by the way, suggests he posts his personal, through which comes Liz, quite capable of keeping John from all that's dull and end his heart's persistent lull. Romance is lit, so now we flit to others in our growing skit of 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 glory of this now climactic story, but rather to have fun with style and maybe just to make you smile. Through all the threads that Seth does weave, a tangled web of lives do cleave when, one by one, with damage done, our lovers break up; tears do run. The bigger picture that he paints will make you see the many saints that linger in our lives each day but ne'er we thank them, ne'er we say "I love you," until death may stray onto their path. They go away and leave you crying as you pray for one more chance, just one more way, to hold them, touch them, make them stay... In my conclusion, I will say this gets five stars, without delay. Through Golden Gates do souls depart. In San Francisco lays my heart. ## Technical Specifications | Specification | Value | |---------------|-------| | Best Sellers Rank | #1,472,381 in Books ( See Top 100 in Books ) #607,514 in Literature & Fiction (Books) | | Customer Reviews | 4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars (195) | | Edition | First Edition | | ISBN-10 | 0394549740 | | ISBN-13 | 978-0394549743 | | Item Weight | 1.38 pounds | | Language | English | | Print length | 307 pages | | Publication date | March 12, 1986 | | Publisher | Random House | ## Images ![The Golden Gate - Image 1](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61V0BWrca2L.jpg) ## Customer Reviews ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Anne Tyler walzing with Pushkin... a surprise, a delight *by D***N on December 6, 2001* 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. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ My Review of The Golden Gate, In Verse *by J***M on October 23, 2013* 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 tale of John, a lonely single male, who's risen in the rank and file but 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 fray with sage support and, by the way, suggests he posts his personal, through which comes Liz, quite capable of keeping John from all that's dull and end his heart's persistent lull. Romance is lit, so now we flit to others in our growing skit of 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 glory of this now climactic story, but rather to have fun with style and maybe just to make you smile. Through all the threads that Seth does weave, a tangled web of lives do cleave when, one by one, with damage done, our lovers break up; tears do run. The bigger picture that he paints will make you see the many saints that linger in our lives each day but ne'er we thank them, ne'er we say "I love you," until death may stray onto their path. They go away and leave you crying as you pray for one more chance, just one more way, to hold them, touch them, make them stay... In my conclusion, I will say this gets five stars, without delay. Through Golden Gates do souls depart. In San Francisco lays my heart. ### ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ West Cost Epic *by L***N on August 2, 2025* Written in Puskin stanzas, this novel in verse is a compelling read. It will make you laugh. It will make you cry. It may change the way you think about life. I bought this copy to give to a new friend. A true treasure. --- ## Why Shop on Desertcart? - 🛒 **Trusted by 1.3+ Million Shoppers** — Serving international shoppers since 2016 - 🌍 **Shop Globally** — Access 737+ million products across 21 categories - 💰 **No Hidden Fees** — All customs, duties, and taxes included in the price - 🔄 **15-Day Free Returns** — Hassle-free returns (30 days for PRO members) - 🔒 **Secure Payments** — Trusted payment options with buyer protection - ⭐ **TrustPilot Rated 4.5/5** — Based on 8,000+ happy customer reviews **Shop now:** [https://www.desertcart.at/products/273670504-the-golden-gate](https://www.desertcart.at/products/273670504-the-golden-gate) --- *Product available on Desertcart Austria* *Store origin: AT* *Last updated: 2026-05-04*