Bordered Beauties and Rusty Waves, Feathered Footmen and Great Brocades, the Gothic and the Stranger...

The Behaviour of Moths by Poppy Adams

I ordered this book a while ago after reading a glowing review of it, I think on the Guardian's website but it might have been The Times. It took a while to arrive because it's not been published in the States yet and had to come from the UK. If it is published here, I hope they keep this cover as I think the design is gorgeous. I'm not sure if it translates but the small green moth motif is a shade of shiny green and is slightly raised. I also think it's a wondrous title for a book. Moths are so peculiar looking and conjure images of dusty attics and silence.

Here's the blurb from the inside jacket:

"From her lookout on the first floor, Ginny watches and waits for her younger sister Vivien to return to the crumbling mansion that was once their idyllic childhood home. Vivien has not set foot in the house since she left forty-seven years ago; Ginny, the reclusive moth expert, has rarely ventured outside it. Selling off the family furniture over the years and gradually shutting off each wing of the house, she has retreated into the precise routines that define her days.

Only the attic remains untouched. There, collected over several generations, the walls are lined with pinned and preserved moths.....Bordered Beauties and Rusty Waves, Feathered Footmen and Great Brocades, the Gothic and the Stranger.....

With Vivien's arrival, long-forgotten memories are stirred up and the secrets that have seperated the sisters threaten to disrupt much more than Ginny's carefully ordered world. "

Dadaaaadaaaaaaaaa.....

I like the name Vivien, maybe because it can be a girl's name or a boy's name: Vivienne Westwood, the lovable prostitute Vivienne in Pretty Woman and Vyvyan from The Young Ones - probably my favourite of the bunch.