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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... From her mother's story, Drabble has fashioned a fully realized fictional world." —The San Diego Union-Tribune "This book is an important and interesting addition to Drabble's Front Matter Praise for The Peppered Moth.
... From her mother's story, Drabble has fashioned a fully realized fictional world." —The San Diego Union-Tribune "This book is an important and interesting addition to Drabble's Front Matter Praise for The Peppered Moth.
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... glimmered through the smoky air? Other children played on the street. Why was Bessie sitting there intoning verses to a cotton bobbin instead of sitting by her mother's knee and helping her with the peg rug? Did her parents abuse 10.
... glimmered through the smoky air? Other children played on the street. Why was Bessie sitting there intoning verses to a cotton bobbin instead of sitting by her mother's knee and helping her with the peg rug? Did her parents abuse 10.
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... mother. That is the way it is with mothers and daughters. Dora, unlike Bessie, was a robust and placid baby. She was never much trouble. There was not room in one family for two delicate children. One was quite enough. Dora chose her ...
... mother. That is the way it is with mothers and daughters. Dora, unlike Bessie, was a robust and placid baby. She was never much trouble. There was not room in one family for two delicate children. One was quite enough. Dora chose her ...
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... mother pegged a rug. Her sister Dora quietly slept. Is Bessie to be our heroine? Something of interest must happen to her, or we would not have wasted all this time making her acquaintance. Something must surely single her out from all ...
... mother pegged a rug. Her sister Dora quietly slept. Is Bessie to be our heroine? Something of interest must happen to her, or we would not have wasted all this time making her acquaintance. Something must surely single her out from all ...
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... mother's sewing drawer. Its yellow endpapers, its tiny print, its gold-engraved title, its vaguely Oriental embossed red-brown cover, and its frontispiece of deathbed and medicine bottles might well have attracted a hypochondriac child ...
... mother's sewing drawer. Its yellow endpapers, its tiny print, its gold-engraved title, its vaguely Oriental embossed red-brown cover, and its frontispiece of deathbed and medicine bottles might well have attracted a hypochondriac child ...
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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