SOURCE: A review of The Golden Gate, in The Southern Humanities Review, Vol. XXII, No. 1, Winter, 1988, pp. 96-8.

In the following review, Smith praises The Golden Gate's pace and style but laments its simplistic characterization and lack of depth.

One Sunday I luxuriated, moving from hammock to canvas captain's chair and back, from sombre to sol and again, with Pepsi at noon and gin by twilight, the whole time entertained by Vikram Seth's The Golden Gate, which author and publisher have named a novel, but which I would call a light verse epic in a minor key.

In 594 (counting dedication, acknowledgements, table of contents and author's bio note) tetrameter fourteeners with the unlikely rhyme scheme of abbaccddeffegg, Seth has woven, through game and gambit and gesture worthy of Pope or Pushkin, a narrative of five central and a dozen other characters occupying the trendy, dreamlike landscape of...