Bessie Bawtry is born in the early years of the twentieth century into a working-class family living in a Yorkshire coal mining town. A child with delicate health and a natural fastidiousness, the precociously bright Bessie longs to escape from the confines of her drably conventional family, her dismal surroundings and also from her younger sister - whom she refers to as dull, dim, stick-in-the-mud Dora - and, in order to make her escape, Bessie works diligently at school and wins a scholarship to Cambridge. Although feeling rather shy during the first few months at Cambridge, Bessie begins to enjoy university life and she takes well to her newly refined status as an undergraduate - after all "had she not always known she was born to be a lady?". However, despite all of Bessie's efforts to escape her past, does she manage to leave her working class origins behind her and begin a whole new life, or does she return to her roots and live a life of disappointment and dissatisfaction? Decades later, some of Bessie's descendants gather in the hall of a Wesleyan Methodist chapel in South Yorkshire to listen to a scientific meeting given by a certain Dr Hawthorn who is about to give an address upon the subject of mitochondrial DNA and matrilineal descent, but what does this have to do with Bessie, or with Bessie's granddaughter, Faro, who has travelled up from London and is sitting in the audience with her Great-Aunt Dora?
Based on the author's own mother, Margaret Drabble admits in an afterword that she encountered great difficulties writing this biographical novel and comments that perhaps she should have tried to write a factual memoir instead - and I have to say that I think I agree. That's not to say that this book does not have its merits - it's very well-written, of course, and parts of the story were interesting to read. However, Bessie was not portrayed very sympathetically and I didn't become as invested in her as a character or become as involved in her life story as much as I would have expected. I also thought the sections focusing on DNA and genetic inheritance felt as if they'd been added on to make the story more interesting, and I found the authorial voice a little intrusive at times (in fact the author apologizes for this in the body of her narrative). I feel I should be discussing themes such as: how much are we shaped by our ancestry and the environment around us; how far do we really travel from our roots; and what power do we really have to reinvent ourselves? However, I find it difficult to work up the necessary enthusiasm for this particular story and although, as already mentioned, there were parts that I found interesting (and I wish I could have learnt more about Gertrude Wadsworth, a character who described herself as 'a poor man's Edith Sitwell' and who bought her furniture from Roger Fry's Omega Workshops), I have to say that I don't feel this is one of the author's better novels and much prefer her earlier books, such as '
A Summer Bird-cage
'; '
Jerusalem the Golden
'; '
The Needle's Eye
' and 'The Radiant Way' trilogy.
3 Stars.
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