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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... daughters said, years later when The slow-lack peppered in their brains like a dust, And life had grown as troublesome as thought. Yet just tonight, I am dreaming of your thigh, And of the unconscious swallows thronging to the eaves ...
... daughters said, years later when The slow-lack peppered in their brains like a dust, And life had grown as troublesome as thought. Yet just tonight, I am dreaming of your thigh, And of the unconscious swallows thronging to the eaves ...
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... daughter, through the long mitochondrial matriarchy. Already Bessie sensed this, and already she feared it. She sensed inertia in the Bawtry marrowbone. Others had shouldered their packs, taken to the road, fled with dark strangers ...
... daughter, through the long mitochondrial matriarchy. Already Bessie sensed this, and already she feared it. She sensed inertia in the Bawtry marrowbone. Others had shouldered their packs, taken to the road, fled with dark strangers ...
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... daughter Bessie, disliked dirt. They were at one on this. Ellen had always been at war with dirt. She lost, but she ... daughters. Dora, unlike Bessie, was a robust and placid baby. She was never much trouble. There was not room in one ...
... daughter Bessie, disliked dirt. They were at one on this. Ellen had always been at war with dirt. She lost, but she ... daughters. Dora, unlike Bessie, was a robust and placid baby. She was never much trouble. There was not room in one ...
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... daughter's cheeks until tears came into her eyes, and of burning the back of her hand with a teaspoon hot from his tea. He also described with too much relish the deaths of cats and dogs in the burning fiery furnace of the Destructor at ...
... daughter's cheeks until tears came into her eyes, and of burning the back of her hand with a teaspoon hot from his tea. He also described with too much relish the deaths of cats and dogs in the burning fiery furnace of the Destructor at ...
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... daughters. The world beyond the wooden cave was full of menace. Steep steps, runaway horses, spiked railings, epidemics of whooping cough and measles and diphtheria. The gormless gaslighter, the loiterer on the corner, the cracks in the ...
... daughters. The world beyond the wooden cave was full of menace. Steep steps, runaway horses, spiked railings, epidemics of whooping cough and measles and diphtheria. The gormless gaslighter, the loiterer on the corner, the cracks in 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