Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winnifred Watson.
April 8, 2008 by rkutler
Originally published in 1938, Miss Pettigrew has been rediscovered and reprinted in a beautiful paperback edition by Persephone, including gorgeous line drawings. A fantasy screwball comedy a little like a Thin Man movie crossed with with an episode of Upstairs Downstairs gone mad, Miss Pettigrew has now been adapted as a major motion picture starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams. ”Miss Pettigrew, an approaching-middle-age governess, was accustomed to a household of unruly English children. When her employment agency sends her to the wrong address, her life takes an unexpected turn. The alluring nightclub singer, Delysia LaFosse, becomes her new employer, and Miss Pettigrew encounters a kind of glamour that she had only met before at the movies. Over the course of a single day, both women are changed forever. [The author] Winifred Watson (1907 - 2002) grew up in Newcastle, and was a secretary until, in 1935, she married Leslie Pickering, the manager of a timber firm. She wrote six novels in all, but after the birth of her son in 1941 she stopped writing and lived quietly in Newcastle for the rest of her life. The Times interviewed her at age 94 when Persephone Books reissued the book in 2000. The headline was ‘Bodice-Ripping Fame at 94.’” - Publisher’s Description
