Sylvia's Lovers

“Sylvia’s Lovers” is a slow-paced, lengthy tome. Had it been half as long I may have liked it twice as much.

Lots of time is wasted with overlong and unnecessary descriptions. The opening chapter could’ve been cut altogether. The descriptive writing itself is very good, as it always is with Mrs Gaskell, but there’s just too much of it for my tastes.

Also, there are elongated asides or digressions, which do nothing to advance the story. On top of this there’s a repetition of information, by which I mean that the reader receives certain info twice after witnessing a scene between two or three characters, only for one of those featured to repeat what just happened to another character. Why relate everything again when something show more like, “She told him all that happened”, would suffice?

The main plot is fine enough, though the number of asides, etc., detract from it too much to get into it for more than a few consecutive paragraphs every so often. I found it a little too preachy for my liking, and at times somewhat depressing, though not as morbid as “Ruth”.

Another downside is that the characters’ dialect slows down the narrative to a degree of annoyance. It’s not like in Mrs Gaskell’s “North & South”, where the northerners spoke in a Manchester dialect whilst the southerners spoke “proper” English. The characters in this novel *all* speak in a strong Yorkshire dialect.

Even though I’m a Yorkshireman myself, I feel it would’ve worked better if the author had mentioned early on in what accent her characters speak with. This way she could’ve written the dialogue with proper grammar, leaving the reader to imagine the characters’ accent.

The dialogue itself is well-written, though. The characters are also strong and believable. I liked Hester – one of the co-stars – best.

Elizabeth Gaskell had a talent for storytelling, of that there’s no doubt in my mind, but mostly it’s not brought to the surface in this overlong book. I rate “North & South” & “Mary Barton” as her best novels. show less

I really loved this book! The book blurb says its takes place during the late 18th century. I think the book was slow going in the first half, but from midpoint on it was spellbinding. It's the story of three people: Sylvia, a woman torn between two men, the romantic sailor Charlie Kincaid, and her quiet, mannerly cousin Philip. The story centers around the impressment of Charlie and moral dilemmas that arise from that. Gaskell gives the characters such passion. Good stuff! 528 pages

An intriguing, anti-romantic novel, melodramatic and fascinating. I didn't find either the handsome, dashing but shallow and unreliable Charley Kinraid or the dismal, obsessed Philip Hepburn sympathetic, but I did find poor Sylvia so.

Hope to have a review of this in the ezine 'the F word' out soon, going into it's 'anti romantic' tendencies as I see them.

I think readers often find Gaskell's intention unclear because she finished the third volume in a rush, so Sylvia's bitter disillusionment with her one-time-Idol Kinraid receives less stress than her growing obession with him in the first volume.

Syvia's Lovers is the saddest book I have ever read which means that it is a wonderful book. The love of parents for a first and only child born later in life when hope was almost gone is a great and powerful love and tragic events rendered that more painful in the telling. Rich in historical detail , this is Elizabeth Gaskell at her best.

I have to admit that Sylvia's Lovers left me strangely unmoved. There was a point about two-thirds of the way through the book that it became a page turner but it was rather short lived. The most interesting parts reflect the anger and agonies caused by the press gangs at the end of the eighteenth century. The worst parts have to do with the silly melodramatic plot and tiresome use of dialect (as if Ms. Gaskell didn't want us to forget for a second that the characters are hopelessly uneducated). In the end, it's a rather mediocre example of her work.

I don't think this one was ever near becoming my favourite Gaskell novel, but it was enjoyable enough, following the life and loves of Sylvia in a small town based on Whitby in the late 18th century.

An interesting novel--not as good as Gaskell's North and South or Wives and Daughters, but still an interesting historical novel...i.e., written about press gangs and the whaling industry during the Napoleonic Wars sixty years later.