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. |
From inside the book
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... Dr Robert Hawthorn is about to address his flock upon the subject of mitochondrial DNA and matrilineal descent. The descendants have been lured here by free refreshments and by curiosity and by boredom. There is not much to do of an ...
... Dr Robert Hawthorn is about to address his flock upon the subject of mitochondrial DNA and matrilineal descent. The descendants have been lured here by free refreshments and by curiosity and by boredom. There is not much to do of an ...
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... Dr Robert Hawthorn, a little shining man of the future, as yet unborn, will be a direct matrilineal connection of Bessie Bawtry, however unlikely that connection might seem. Dr Hawthorn will make it part of his mission to track the Bawtrys ...
... Dr Robert Hawthorn, a little shining man of the future, as yet unborn, will be a direct matrilineal connection of Bessie Bawtry, however unlikely that connection might seem. Dr Hawthorn will make it part of his mission to track the Bawtrys ...
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... Dr Hawthorn to his Start Button, as he waited to impress the wonders of genes and genealogy upon his patient audience. Bessie Bawtry could not foresee this future, or this past. But under that table her infant molecules yearned and ...
... Dr Hawthorn to his Start Button, as he waited to impress the wonders of genes and genealogy upon his patient audience. Bessie Bawtry could not foresee this future, or this past. But under that table her infant molecules yearned and ...
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... Dr Hawthorn diagnose and analyse the very gene that provoked her to attempt mutation? And will she succeed in her escape? To answer these questions we must try to rediscover that long-ago infant in her vanished world. Bessie Bawtry ...
... Dr Hawthorn diagnose and analyse the very gene that provoked her to attempt mutation? And will she succeed in her escape? To answer these questions we must try to rediscover that long-ago infant in her vanished world. Bessie Bawtry ...
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... Dr Hawthorn, with his electronic trees and tables, will tell. Meanwhile, under the tablecloth, Bessie Bawtry sat and rotated her painted cotton bobbin and rehearsed phrases from hymns and from the lessons from the Bible. She could ...
... Dr Hawthorn, with his electronic trees and tables, will tell. Meanwhile, under the tablecloth, Bessie Bawtry sat and rotated her painted cotton bobbin and rehearsed phrases from hymns and from the lessons from the Bible. She could ...
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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