The Moth

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In the English county of Durham prior to World War I, marrying out of one's class is social suicide. Veteran storyteller Cookson (The Bannaman Legacy, The Moth once again captures the stratified society of Northumberland in the late 19th century. While Sarah is off dealing with things way better than could ever be expected and running the house and being cool, Robert is having kind of a time of it. He agrees vociferously, and they blissfully make out some more, and everything is just the more adorable ever. Just sucks for him that he goes ahead and falls in love with someone absolutely cloistered in the same classist structure that he happily dismisses.

As Agnes's monetary fortu nes decline and Robert's advance, the absurdity of the division grows more apparent. Robert has a short fling with Nancy, a local village girl, but Nancy wants marriage and Robert doesn't love her. Hatred and duty and their effect on an English family in 1960 are the themes of Cookson's 14th novel (after The Maltese Angel). Because he is the best and they are the best, he respects her wish to be left alone, and just lets the housekeeper, Mrs. Sarah is not super happy with him because something he offhandedly told Millie means Millie has been diving for invisible sixpence in the dirt and knocking over Sarah’s awful fiancé, etc.Fewer than 50 pages into the novel, perceptive readers recognize that Agnes Thorman and R obert Bradley will cross those barriers to marry.

In fact, they waste no time making her life worse – her mother succumbs to Lady-itis, leaving Sarah behind with her drunk-ass dad and a pile of letters she gives Sarah about how Millie isn’t her father’s daughter, but her mother’s LOVAH’S DAUGHTER. He takes pride in himself and tries to be the best that he can be, disregarding the heckling from others he often receives. Also, that puppy chills out for several very uncomfortable scenes of people carrying it while trying to smash windows, dodge open flames, etc. Life with domineering Uncle John and his family did not always prove easy, however, and on Sunday Robert was glad to set off alone exploring the Durham countryside.The book becomes a story of two people who are very different, reacting to life through the eyes of what they have learned within their respective classes, finding themselves questioning it. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Because the outcome is never in doubt, Co okson must use madness, murder, and sexual suggestion to keep the plot chur ning. It comes in handy that I gave it to my mom as a gift for Christmas a coule years ago, so I knew she had it.

Not shown: hilarious cut from “I want to marry you as soon as you can put the ring on my finger” to his super-bandaged mitt shoving a ring onto her finger, like as soon as he realized that marriage meant sex, he was down with WHATEVER.She said, once its reflection touches the water it turns to gold; but you must never try to steal it, for if you did the night would lose its smile. Catherine wrote her first short story, "The Wild Irish Girl," at the age of eleven and sent it to the South Shields Gazette, which sent it back in three days. Angry Butler ends up going way off the rails, and it’s especially sad considering that at this point he and Mrs. Luckily, Robert is there to literally pick her off the ground and then hold her close to console her, like you do with that employer you haven’t known very long.