This tragic epic, which actually only covers about six or so years, reads like a medley of traditional English folk songs. Folk songs so often being about hard times and sadness. Oh my love has gone to sea. My love proved untrue. The unquiet grave. Hangings and crimes. The hard life of country folk. It has been a fantastic read, but if you're feeling a bit low, maybe one to put to one side for a while. This, coupled with the title "Sylvia's Lovers" maybe makes it sound like an overly sentimental melodrama. There are elements of the plot that could be called that and there is a strong tragic romantic vein running right through the book. But that's not all that's it's about, and for me the thing that hit me the most is the disillushionment with life. When this starts off, the young men involved are in their early twenties, the young women in their late teens. The sun is shining, everyone's a bit giddy and hopeful, there's thoughts of who likes who and so on. There's hope of this great romantic future, of how their lives would be. Then we follow them through as reality hits, life and circumstance happens, and they find themselves caught up in things and life simply doesn't happen as they had expected. Then suddenly they're beyond the anticipation stage in life, of waiting for all that will come, the moment's gone, the rest of their lives paved out ahead and it's all not what had been hoped for. Life's always been like that, it's nothing new.

The story is set in the fictional town of Monkshaven on the east coast of England in Yorkshire. There's no such town, but anyone who knows this part of the world knows at a glance that it's set in Whitby. Sylvia lives with her mother and father on a little farm on higher ground above the whaling port (and also the port out of which Captain Cook sailed, incidentally). Her cousin, Philip Hepburn, works in the shop in town, and is utterly besotted with her. He's a bit strait laced. Charley Kinraid, a whaling sailor and cousin to one of Sylvia's pals, is dashing and adventurous on the other hand.

As well as the lives of the main characters there's also the social dynamics and history of the times. The Napoleonic wars are on and the press gangs are about stealing away men to man the Royal Navy ships. So there's the trouble that brews between the locals and the press gangs over this, and the effect it has on local people's lives.

The dialogue is written in I suppose what Gaskell would have seen as Yorkshire dialect of the time. I'm not a massive fan of people writing dialogue in dialect, for so often they can just get the dialect wrong, and can risk it coming across as twee or just plain patronising. So depending on how familiar you are with broader Yorkshire, it may take a little while to get into the swing of the way they talk.

I've been interested in the history of Whitby recently, which is why I picked up this book in the first place. It's been fun to read something that is so definitely set in an area I know, and so obviously also a place that the author had visited.