I read Golden Gate<\/i> by Vikram Seth this week, a book I have been keeping an eye open for for years, and was not disappointed. When I read An Equal Music<\/i> a few years ago I thought it was one of the best books I had read for a long time (although I later found A Suitable Boy<\/i> impossible to digest).<\/p>\n
Golden Gate<\/i> is a rare tour de force<\/i>: a novel in verse. The whole book, including the Acknowledgments, Dedication, Table of Contents, and endnote about the author, is written in fourteen line sonnet-like stanzas with a strict meter and rhyme scheme. There is no sign that these constraints have done anything to inhibit the author’s freedom or expressive power.<\/p>\n
Here is a beautiful example, describing one of my favourite places, the source of the book’s title, and also of this site’s colour scheme:<\/p>\n
They park the car by the Marina.
\nThe surface of the cobalt bay
\nIs flecked with white. The moister, keener
\nOctober air has rinsed away
\nThe whispering mists with crisp intensity
\nAnd over the opaque immensity
\nA deliquescent wash of blue
\nReveals the bridge, long lost to view
\nIn summer’s quilt of fog: the towers,
\nHigh-built, red-gold, with their long span
\n—The most majestic spun by man—
\nWhose threads of steel through mist and showers
\nWind, spray, and the momentous roar
\nOf ocean storms, link shore to shore.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nIt is an interesting coincidence that both the books by Vikram Seth that I have enjoyed so much have been about places that I have been familiar with. In An Equal Music<\/i> almost every location, especially Kensington and Venice, was resonant with my own memories, and Golden Gate<\/i> is set in my new home, the San Francisco Bay area.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I read Golden Gate by Vikram Seth this week, a book I have been keeping an eye open for for years, and was not disappointed. When I read An Equal Music a few years ago I thought it was one of the best books I had read for a long time (although I later found […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.smontagu.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}