Let me begin by making it clear what The Golden Gate, the new “novel in verse” by Vikram Seth, is not. It isn’t poetry: it doesn’t have (or attempt to have) the requisite depth or density; it isn’t rich in metaphor or other poetic devices; to examine it alongside a contemporary book-length narrative poem like Alfred Corn’s Notes from a Child of Paradise is to recognize that the two works are so utterly different in kind as to make comparison pointless. Nor is The Golden Gate a great novel: there can be little doubt but that, had it been written in prose, its characters would have come across as rather insignificant, its plot as less than compelling.

What this book is, however, is an extraordinarily accomplished work of narrative verse—one that has all the cardinal virtues of the genre, and has them in abundance. It’s engaging, well-paced, technically mesmerizing; indeed, one of Seth’s most remarkable achievements is that he makes us forget about those mainstays of contemporary literature, poetry and the novel, and reminds us how enthralling it can be to watch a prodigious versifier triumph, line by line, over an extremely challenging form—all the time developing a charming story, sustaining a sardonic yet sympathetic tone, and flourish ing a marvelous wit. Seth has done something a good deal more difficult than compose a respectable contemporary novel or long poem: he has given new life to a genre that, for no good reason, has in the