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
Results 1-5 of 18
Page
... wonder Bessie Bawtry hid. Bessie's earliest memory was of a steep and narrow staircase. Strait was the way. A narrow, steep incline, of steps too high for her short legs, and herself midway, on the seventh step, crouching, unable to ...
... wonder Bessie Bawtry hid. Bessie's earliest memory was of a steep and narrow staircase. Strait was the way. A narrow, steep incline, of steps too high for her short legs, and herself midway, on the seventh step, crouching, unable to ...
Page
... wonder if it will ever show its features. Maybe it will for ever vanish out of sight, just ahead of them, around the corner, beyond the branches, behind the trees, lost in the reeds and the willows. What is it, what will it be, will ...
... wonder if it will ever show its features. Maybe it will for ever vanish out of sight, just ahead of them, around the corner, beyond the branches, behind the trees, lost in the reeds and the willows. What is it, what will it be, will ...
Page
... wonder Rowena Barron was off to the Plain of Sharon and the dashing bounding remittance men of the Cape. Slender Bessie Bawtry was not daydreaming. She was alert and tense, as she sat neatly on the edge of her chair, leaning slightly ...
... wonder Rowena Barron was off to the Plain of Sharon and the dashing bounding remittance men of the Cape. Slender Bessie Bawtry was not daydreaming. She was alert and tense, as she sat neatly on the edge of her chair, leaning slightly ...
Page
... wonder the preachers born of the industrial revolution found texts in Isaiah, in Jeremiah, in Ezekiel. For what had the prophets said of Hammervale? 'I will give it into the hands of strangers for a prey, and to the 53.
... wonder the preachers born of the industrial revolution found texts in Isaiah, in Jeremiah, in Ezekiel. For what had the prophets said of Hammervale? 'I will give it into the hands of strangers for a prey, and to the 53.
Page
... wonder if there is not perhaps a touch of the charlatan about him, but both, independently—for they have not yet been introduced—dismiss this suspicion as unworthy: the gift of the gab does not necessarily make one a bad scientist, does ...
... wonder if there is not perhaps a touch of the charlatan about him, but both, independently—for they have not yet been introduced—dismiss this suspicion as unworthy: the gift of the gab does not necessarily make one a bad scientist, does ...
Other editions - View all
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