Why not a novel in verse? It's all a question of expectations, and in The Golden Gate the Indian-born poet Vikram Seth single-handedly overturns most readers' expectations about what can, and cannot, pass as a novel. Whatever the frame of mind in which you begin it, by the end it has come to seem the most natural - and the most accessible, and easily assessable - thing in the world. One takes the poetic dexterity for granted, and begins to see its faults as a novel. Perhaps neither reaction is wholly fair to the author, but it is he who has taken a gamble and broken the rules.

LRB 7 August 1986 | PDF Download