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Product Description
Product Description
Sylvia's Lovers is set during the French Revolutionary Wars in the remote whaling-port of Monkshaven in Yorkshire where the sea dominates the lives of the inhabitants. The people of Monkshaven hate the French, but they live in greater and more immediate fear of the callous press-gang, who snatch sailors returning from a whaling trip before they have even spoken to their friends or families. In Elizabeth Gaskell's provincial England war mirrors a private violence which has already disrupted the lives of her fictional characters. Sylvia is a heroine loved by two very different men - the bold sailor Charley Kinraid and the cautious and conventional Philip Hepburn, who idolizes her. The novel follows her development from a wilful, imaginative, but not especially clever girl, to an alert woman whose suffering changes her.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Sylvia's Lovers, set towards the end of the eighteenth century in the town of Monkshaven (a thinly veiled and beautifully described Whitby) tells the tale of the local beauty, Sylvia, and the two men who vie for her affections: quiet, thoughtful Philip Hepburn and charismatic, serial heart-breaker Charley Kinraid. Against this drama of local passions a larger story plays itself out as the inhabitants of the town find themselves at the mercy of press-gangs, keen to snatch sailors from the whaling ships and force them into service against the French. The two suitors spa with each other as the town finds itself more at odds with the English navy than with the supposedly hostile but never seen raiders from France.
What makes the novel so striking is the quality of Gaskell's writing. Towards the beginning of the book a local lad dies during a skirmish with the press-gang and the description of his burial, with virtually the whole town in attendance at the windswept church, and with the relatives sobbing beneath a slate-grey sky as the bells toll and the waves crash against the shore far below is so exquisitely depicted as to be genuinely moving. Gaskell was also good at analysing what makes people tick - her descriptions of the local shop girl Hester Rose, quietly besotted with Philip who, in turn, is barely even aware that she exists, tell you all you could ever wish to know about the wretched misery of unrequited love.
Gaskell described Sylvia's Lovers as the saddest story she ever wrote but while it does contain episodes that even Thomas Hardy might have regarded as unduly pessimistic (well, almost....) there are occasions during the later half of the novel when the story veers away from tragedy and stumbles dangerously close to melodrama. The book has a slightly uneven feel, with the first half reading like Middlemarch (a beautiful evocation of town life and the passions of the inhabitants) while the latter occasionally reads like East Lynne (general all-round hysteria) but in a sense by making the first part of her book so elegant Gaskell was able to show how quickly and spectacularly things can fall apart when tragedy strikes. The book may be uneven but then, on many occasions, so is life. After all the grandest of passions and the greatest of tragedies can play themselves out in the most unexpected of places and the most seemingly quiet of lives. Highly recommended, if you fancy a little drama in your reading life.
What makes the novel so striking is the quality of Gaskell's writing. Towards the beginning of the book a local lad dies during a skirmish with the press-gang and the description of his burial, with virtually the whole town in attendance at the windswept church, and with the relatives sobbing beneath a slate-grey sky as the bells toll and the waves crash against the shore far below is so exquisitely depicted as to be genuinely moving. Gaskell was also good at analysing what makes people tick - her descriptions of the local shop girl Hester Rose, quietly besotted with Philip who, in turn, is barely even aware that she exists, tell you all you could ever wish to know about the wretched misery of unrequited love.
Gaskell described Sylvia's Lovers as the saddest story she ever wrote but while it does contain episodes that even Thomas Hardy might have regarded as unduly pessimistic (well, almost....) there are occasions during the later half of the novel when the story veers away from tragedy and stumbles dangerously close to melodrama. The book has a slightly uneven feel, with the first half reading like Middlemarch (a beautiful evocation of town life and the passions of the inhabitants) while the latter occasionally reads like East Lynne (general all-round hysteria) but in a sense by making the first part of her book so elegant Gaskell was able to show how quickly and spectacularly things can fall apart when tragedy strikes. The book may be uneven but then, on many occasions, so is life. After all the grandest of passions and the greatest of tragedies can play themselves out in the most unexpected of places and the most seemingly quiet of lives. Highly recommended, if you fancy a little drama in your reading life.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
2 reviews
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
A fine novel
29 Aug 2010
Format:Paperback
This is a mature and engaging work by a fine novelist. Taking the operations of England's press gangs around the turn of the eighteenth century as a point of departure, the author builds a suspenseful and moving story. (The story is not as lurid as the title might imply to today's sensibility.)
0 of 3 people found the following review helpful
good read for a winter afternoon
20 Nov 2009
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
classic female lit. Sylvia's Lovers sounds lurid, but it is 1800's innocent. A woman has to choose between two men.
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