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
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... 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, although they are ...
... 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, although they are ...
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... might be expected to die young. Perhaps only the coarser strains had bred and multiplied amongst the slag heaps and the quarries and the pitheads. Bessie may be an evolutionary mistake, a dead end, a throwback to the clear valleys. 7.
... might be expected to die young. Perhaps only the coarser strains had bred and multiplied amongst the slag heaps and the quarries and the pitheads. Bessie may be an evolutionary mistake, a dead end, a throwback to the clear valleys. 7.
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... young Bessie, with her refined nature and her great expectations, did not seem too good on that October evening long ago. It seemed that nothing would ever change. It seemed she would never get out of here. It was lucky, really, that ...
... young Bessie, with her refined nature and her great expectations, did not seem too good on that October evening long ago. It seemed that nothing would ever change. It seemed she would never get out of here. It was lucky, really, that ...
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... young, by the side of her mother's copper and her mother's oak peggy tub, in the hot steaming fug worked up from yellow bars of Perfection Soap, where she played with her own little doll's washtub and her own little toy wringer.) Bessie ...
... young, by the side of her mother's copper and her mother's oak peggy tub, in the hot steaming fug worked up from yellow bars of Perfection Soap, where she played with her own little doll's washtub and her own little toy wringer.) Bessie ...
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... young people of Breaseborough, of Doncaster, of Bingley, of Selby, of Grimsby, of York. They must move on, they must gain a better world, they must never slip through the cracks into the slough, the pit, the trenches. They must march ...
... young people of Breaseborough, of Doncaster, of Bingley, of Selby, of Grimsby, of York. They must move on, they must gain a better world, they must never slip through the cracks into the slough, the pit, the trenches. They must march ...
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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