The Behaviour of Moths is Poppy Adams debut novel, I was totally engrossed from the very first page and it has only taken me two evenings to read it.
It is the tale of two elderly sisters, Ginny and Vivien. Vivien is returning to Bulburrow Court after an absence of forty-seven years. The crumbling mansion was once their childhood home where the sisters had grown up being the best of friends. The reader is left to wonder if the events which have kept Vivien away for so long will be able to remain in the past or whether the sister's reunion will bring them to the fore again.
Ginny is the sole narrator of the story and as you get further and further into the book you begin to wonder just how believable she is and how far you can trust what she is saying. This unsettling feeling permeates throughout the story. There are so many questions from the past that you want answered but the most important question from the present is why exactly Vivien has returned to Bulburrow Court after so many years.
Poppy Adams delves head first into the relationships within a family. The sisterly relationship between Ginny and Vivien dominates the story but their relationship is also intrinsically linked to the very different relationships that they had with both of their parents individually.
I loved the aspect of the story that looked at Ginny and her father's role as lepidopterologists; collectors and researchers of moths. You can clearly see that Poppy Adams heavily researched this area and I truly would not have believed that moths could be so fascinating. Ginny and her father are so caught up in observing the moths that the chaos occurring around them goes unnoticed until it is far too late and the consequences for the family are devastating.
The Behaviour of Moths does have a feel of Du Maurier's Rebecca about it in that it gives you this very unsettling feeling as it gradually builds up to quite a shocking finale. I was not expecting what happened at the end even though the possibility of it had been hovering in the background.
Poppy Adams has created a beautiful yet quite sinister story that grabs you from the very first page. As a debut novel it is beautifully written and I look forward to reading other books by this author in the future.
