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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... Rowena and Ivy. Rowena works as bookkeeper for Ben and Bennett, having volunteered to replace a character known as Ratty Red who had been fiddling the figures. She is not very good at figures, but she is much better at them than Ben ...
... Rowena and Ivy. Rowena works as bookkeeper for Ben and Bennett, having volunteered to replace a character known as Ratty Red who had been fiddling the figures. She is not very good at figures, but she is much better at them than Ben ...
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... Rowena and Ivy, for herself and Joe. Bessie politely admired the teacups—botanical Spode, with an ornate pink patterning of twining foliage and stylized carnations and roses. Each cup had within its bowl, opposite the sipping lips of ...
... Rowena and Ivy, for herself and Joe. Bessie politely admired the teacups—botanical Spode, with an ornate pink patterning of twining foliage and stylized carnations and roses. Each cup had within its bowl, opposite the sipping lips of ...
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... Rowena was indeed planning to take herself off to sea on a luxury cruise. This year, next year, sometime. She was off to the Holy Land, though not for any very holy reasons, and would proceed thence through the Suez Canal and back round ...
... Rowena was indeed planning to take herself off to sea on a luxury cruise. This year, next year, sometime. She was off to the Holy Land, though not for any very holy reasons, and would proceed thence through the Suez Canal and back round ...
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... Rowena really sail away, or was this a daydream, a fantasy? Time will tell. The world was speeding up, and the great ocean liners were competing for custom and cutting their prices, eager to forget the Great War, eager to forget the ...
... Rowena really sail away, or was this a daydream, a fantasy? Time will tell. The world was speeding up, and the great ocean liners were competing for custom and cutting their prices, eager to forget the Great War, eager to forget the ...
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... Rowena, in Ivy's view, never did anything to help. Rowena took out a violent-hued raffia basket of purple and acid-green which she was constructing, and Mrs Barron took up her embroidery—yet another linen tablecloth, which would join ...
... Rowena, in Ivy's view, never did anything to help. Rowena took out a violent-hued raffia basket of purple and acid-green which she was constructing, and Mrs Barron took up her embroidery—yet another linen tablecloth, which would join ...
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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