“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 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. ( )