Sylvia's Lovers (Everyman Paperback Classics)

Rating:
Summary: History's Cold Shadow
Review: In this bleak novel Elizabeth Gaskell deftly weaves a dark thread of history into her narrative tapestry. While war hovers on the margins of the novel, no one is left unaffected by its horror. After a sometimes painfully slow setup of domestic life in the seaside town of Monkshaven in the first third of the book, the sense of doom grows increasingly palpable. Sylvia, the novel's heroine, is isolated by her supposedly protective domestic sphere, but Gaskell shatters the delicate domestic circle that surrounds her. While Sylvia is left to bear emotional scars, becoming an impassive, hardened woman, Charley Kinraid, her true love, returns from war a ghost, haunting the margins of Monkshaven to hide his terrible physical scars. The full realization of the blight on Sylvia's life comes when the novel spirals down to its inevitable conclusion, where even reconciliation and understanding brings a powerful sense of loss.

Rating:
Summary: History's Cold Shadow
Review: In this bleak novel Elizabeth Gaskell deftly weaves a dark thread of history into her narrative tapestry. While war hovers on the margins of the novel, no one is left unaffected by its horror. After a sometimes painfully slow setup of domestic life in the seaside town of Monkshaven in the first third of the book, the sense of doom grows increasingly palpable. Sylvia, the novel's heroine, is isolated by her supposedly protective domestic sphere, but Gaskell shatters the delicate domestic circle that surrounds her. While Sylvia is left to bear emotional scars, becoming an impassive, hardened woman, Charley Kinraid, her true love, returns from war a ghost, haunting the margins of Monkshaven to hide his terrible physical scars. The full realization of the blight on Sylvia's life comes when the novel spirals down to its inevitable conclusion, where even reconciliation and understanding brings a powerful sense of loss.