It is 1912 and Bessie Bawtry is a small child living in Breaseborough, a South Yorkshire mining town.
Unusually gifted, she sits quietly and studies hard, waiting for the day when she can sit the
Cambridge entrance exam and escape the kind of life her ancestors have never even thought to question.
Her parents are in awe of her - who is this swan-child, is she a freak? (Where did
she get her notions? Who did she think she was?)
Nearly a century later Bessie's granddaughter, Faro Gaulden, is listening to a lecture on
genetic inheritance. She ahs returned to the depressed little town where Bessie grew up and
all around her she sees the families who have stayed there for longer than anyone can remember.
Faro's father was a desperate, wild, drinking man, the scion of part-Jewish, part-Polish,
part-German refugees. But for all her exotic ancestry and glamour, has Faro really
travelled any further than her Breaseborough kin?
Margaret Drabble's new novel, her first in five years, is a wonderfully absorbing,
multi-layerd portrait of four generations of one family, with origins similar to her own.
It explores themes of relationships between the generations, environmental and genetic
inheritance and adaptation, DNA, and the individual's place in history.
Margaret Drabble was born in Sheffield in 1939 and went to the Mount School, York,
a Quaker boarding school. She won a Major Scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge,
where she read English. She was awarded a CBE in 1980.
Her many novels include the trilogy The Radiant Way (1987), A Natural Curiosity (1989)
and The Gates of Ivory (1991), and The Witch of Exmoor (1996), all of which were published by Penquin.
Among her non-fiction works are Arnold Bennett: A Biography (1974), The Oxford
Companion to English Literature (1985, edited; new edition, 2000) and, most recently, Angus
Wilson: A Biography (1995).
Margaret Drabble is married to the biographer Michael Holroyd and lives in London.
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