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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... women is a triumph— An exuberant, intelligent, and thoroughly entertaining saga of three generations." —Booklist (starred review) "One of our foremost women writers." —The Guardian "Bad mothers, just as surely as absentee fathers or ...
... women is a triumph— An exuberant, intelligent, and thoroughly entertaining saga of three generations." —Booklist (starred review) "One of our foremost women writers." —The Guardian "Bad mothers, just as surely as absentee fathers or ...
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... woman sits a beautiful young woman. What on earth is she doing here? She is radiant with light. She dazzles. She is a bobby-dazzler. She has surely walked in out of some other plot. She cannot be the daughter of that old woman, can she ...
... woman sits a beautiful young woman. What on earth is she doing here? She is radiant with light. She dazzles. She is a bobby-dazzler. She has surely walked in out of some other plot. She cannot be the daughter of that old woman, can she ...
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... woman. The Great War and the Spanish influenza had murdered the lovers of Miss Heald and her generation, and ... women teachers. What would she want with a man? If she married, she would have to give up her job. That was then the ...
... woman. The Great War and the Spanish influenza had murdered the lovers of Miss Heald and her generation, and ... women teachers. What would she want with a man? If she married, she would have to give up her job. That was then the ...
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... woman, and looked and dressed like an old woman. Unlike Bessie's mother Ellen, she was thin, not stout: she was a bony, upright figure, and she sat forward on the edge of the chair, her back stiff to attention. She was dressed in a dark ...
... woman, and looked and dressed like an old woman. Unlike Bessie's mother Ellen, she was thin, not stout: she was a bony, upright figure, and she sat forward on the edge of the chair, her back stiff to attention. She was dressed in a dark ...
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... woman, was aware that for Bessie these results were of particular importance. Bessie was to stay on at school that autumn to sit her Cambridge entrance, and she would need a County Major Scholarship to finance her, if she were fortunate ...
... woman, was aware that for Bessie these results were of particular importance. Bessie was to stay on at school that autumn to sit her Cambridge entrance, and she would need a County Major Scholarship to finance her, if she were fortunate ...
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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