Harcourt,
2001
From
her earliest days, Bessie Bawtry knows she does not belong in the
dreary, polluted coal mining town of Breaseborough. She is better
than her dour, unemotional mother Ellen, her distant father Burt, her
ploddingly dull sister Dora. She is destined for something great.
South Yorkshire is a prison which she is determined to escape.
As
the protegĂ©e of a teacher with “modern” ideas, Bessie studies
hard and wins a scholarship to Cambridge. She marries a man of means
and makes a home in lovely Derbyshire. Freeing oneself from the past
is more difficult than it would appear, though. Even with beauty,
brains and ambition, Bessie finds it difficult to build a satisfying
life.
Nearly
a century later, Bessie’s scientist granddaughter Faro returns to
Breaseborough for a seminar on her family’s genetic roots. She
tries to solve the puzzle of why some people stay put and simply
adapt to their environment, no matter how difficult or dark, while
others manage to relocate and thrive.
I
picked up this novel at a used book sale because I’d never read
anything by this respected literary author. It’s an intriguing
story, mixing a multi-generational family saga with some serious
meditations on love, biology, luck and fate. The narrative voice is
mostly third party omniscient, a stylistic decision I found annoying
at times. In particular, the author has a tendency to ask sly
rhetorical questions when of course she knows the answers.
Still,
I enjoyed The Peppered Moth, partly because of its vivid
descriptions and elegant prose but mostly due to its memorable
characters. Bessie’s self-centeredness and her tendency to
sabotage her own happiness make her pretty unappealing, but Faro and
her mother Chrissie are both strong, complex women with whom I could
identify. I particularly loved the description of the intense,
ultimately tragic love between Chrissie and Nick Gaulden, Faro’s
father. Somehow the author descends from her omniscience down to the
earth when describing their youthful passion.
Faro
is intriguing and complex, at least partially because she is a
descendant of all these varied individuals—Bessie, brilliant and
perpetually dissatisfied; Aunt Dora, patient and nurturing; Chrissie,
practical and (after her betrayal by her first love) unromantic; and
the rakish and irresistible Nick.
Although
The Peppered Moth is a dark story at times, it ends on a note
of hope. Faro is the future; you want her to escape from the negative
forces in her genetic background and to flourish. By the time you
close the book, you are fairly convinced that she will.
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