The Peppered MothThe prize-winning author of The Dark Flood Rises offers an “absorbing” portrait of three generations of women—inspired by her own family (The New York Times Book Review). In the early 1900s, young Bessie Bawtry grows up in a mining town in South Yorkshire, England. Unusually gifted, she longs to escape a life burdened by unquestioned tradition. She studies patiently, dreaming of the day when she will take the entrance exam for Cambridge and leave her narrow world. A generation later, Bessie’s daughter Chrissie feels a similar impulse to expand her horizons, which she in turn passes on to her own daughter. Nearly a century after that, Bessie’s granddaughter finds herself listening to a lecture on genetics and biological determinism. She has returned to Breaseborough and wonders at the families who remained in the humble little town where Bessie grew up. Confronted with what would have been her life had her grandmother stayed, she finds herself faced with difficult questions. Is she really so different from the plain South Yorkshire locals? As she soon learns, the past has a way of reasserting itself—not unlike the peppered moth that was once thought to be nearing extinction but is now enjoying a sudden and unexplained resurgence. With The Peppered Moth, the acclaimed author of The Seven Sisters conjures a captivating work of semi-fiction, grappling with her memory of her own mother and the indelible mark of family and heredity. |
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... Breaseborough, and they are willing to give Dr Hawthorn a hearing. Some of them are locals who have dropped in on the off chance of hearing something interesting about their own family backgrounds, or about the discovery in the cave ...
... Breaseborough, and they are willing to give Dr Hawthorn a hearing. Some of them are locals who have dropped in on the off chance of hearing something interesting about their own family backgrounds, or about the discovery in the cave ...
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... Breaseborough, which is on the way out to Bednerby Main. 'Joy cometh in the morning.' Will it come? Will it ever come? The Jesus pennies dropped into the bottom of a specially adapted ginger-beer bottle. When the bottle was full, it was ...
... Breaseborough, which is on the way out to Bednerby Main. 'Joy cometh in the morning.' Will it come? Will it ever come? The Jesus pennies dropped into the bottom of a specially adapted ginger-beer bottle. When the bottle was full, it was ...
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... Breaseborough that the Saviour's yoke was easy and his burden light, bellowing forth the Hallelujah Chorus, and chanting to the gates to lift up their heads. Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting portals ...
... Breaseborough that the Saviour's yoke was easy and his burden light, bellowing forth the Hallelujah Chorus, and chanting to the gates to lift up their heads. Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting portals ...
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... Breaseborough. Those with little are trained to despise those with less. Contempt marks off an area, it marks you off from the common street. You are protected from the common by a small, useless, ugly, proud, discriminatory little ...
... Breaseborough. Those with little are trained to despise those with less. Contempt marks off an area, it marks you off from the common street. You are protected from the common by a small, useless, ugly, proud, discriminatory little ...
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... Breaseborough was not real. It was a mistake. She was not alone in this view. The exodus from Breaseborough is part of our plot. Some stayed, some left, and, decades on, some were gathered back into the hall of the Wesleyan chapel to ...
... Breaseborough was not real. It was a mistake. She was not alone in this view. The exodus from Breaseborough is part of our plot. Some stayed, some left, and, decades on, some were gathered back into the hall of the Wesleyan chapel to ...
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Common terms and phrases
Auntie Dora babies Bert Bessie Barron Bessie Bawtry Bessie's boys Breasebor Breaseborough Cambridge Chrissie's coal Cotterhall dark daugh daughter dead death Donald Sinclair Dora's Dr Hawthorn earth Edith Sitwell Ellen Bawtry eyes Faro Gaulden Faro's father Fiona George Bellew Georgette Heyer Gertrude Wadsworth girl glass Hammervale happy Highcross Holderfield Jenny Pargiter Joe Barron knew listened live look Lyme Regis married Miss Heald mother never Nick Gaulden Nick's night Northam once peppered moth Peter Cudworth ring Robert and Chrissie Rose round Rowena says Faro Sebastian seemed sister sister Dora Slotton Road smell South Yorkshire Spanish flu stare Stella Steve Nieman story sure T. S. Eliot tell thing thought tried waiting waste watch woman women wonder young