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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... South Yorkshire. Here they gather, the descendants. Where have they all come from, and who has summoned them? Is this a religious occasion? Are we about to hear a sermon? Sermons hang heavy in the air, for in this hall the ancestors ...
... South Yorkshire. Here they gather, the descendants. Where have they all come from, and who has summoned them? Is this a religious occasion? Are we about to hear a sermon? Sermons hang heavy in the air, for in this hall the ancestors ...
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... South Yorkshire coal belt. (The son of a Midlands coal miner was even then writing about the Oedipus complex, but his works would not reach Bessie Bawtry for some years.) Both parent-murder and genes, however, had been around for a very ...
... South Yorkshire coal belt. (The son of a Midlands coal miner was even then writing about the Oedipus complex, but his works would not reach Bessie Bawtry for some years.) Both parent-murder and genes, however, had been around for a very ...
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... South Yorkshire in the early years of the twentieth century, when pollution was so pervasive that it provoked no comment. Only strangers from the soft south or the rural northern dales noticed its pall. The natives lived in it, coughed ...
... South Yorkshire in the early years of the twentieth century, when pollution was so pervasive that it provoked no comment. Only strangers from the soft south or the rural northern dales noticed its pall. The natives lived in it, coughed ...
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... may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.' We must find our sustenance where we may. The texts of the Hebrews travelled by strange routes to the South Yorkshire coalfields. God's Sacred Word, though not in the 8.
... may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.' We must find our sustenance where we may. The texts of the Hebrews travelled by strange routes to the South Yorkshire coalfields. God's Sacred Word, though not in the 8.
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Margaret Drabble. South Yorkshire coalfields. God's Sacred Word, though not in the form or language known to Bessie, had been heard in the hamlets of Hammervale since the Dark Ages. It had brought a new strain to the genetic sloth of the ...
Margaret Drabble. South Yorkshire coalfields. God's Sacred Word, though not in the form or language known to Bessie, had been heard in the hamlets of Hammervale since the Dark Ages. It had brought a new strain to the genetic sloth of the ...
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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