Skip to main content

Review: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, by Winifred Watson

Miss Pettigrew is a penniless governess out of work, when her employment agency sends her to fill a post as governess at the home of Miss Delysia LaFosse. But when she arrives, everything is turned on its head as Miss Pettigrew finds herself living in glamour for the first time in her life. Along the way, she helps out a few new-found friends, attends several glamorous parties, and finds herself being “not quite herself.”

The description of the book on Amazon is that this is a kind of modern day (1930s) Cinderella tale—which it certainly is. It’s a very charming, witty, and eccentric book, one that I enjoyed immensely. There are also a series of illustrations inside, which add to the magic of this very special little book.



This is Persephone #21 (endpaper below)

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Trish @ Love, Laughter, Insanity said…
Sounds like fun--did you see the movie that recently came out?
May 22, 2008 at 7:12 PM
Teddy Rose said…
Really nice review. Thanks! I added this to my TBR, as it will be a nice change of pace.
May 23, 2008 at 12:40 AM
Anonymous said…
This is one I want to read too!

The title makes it sound like it's got old-fashioned humor. Whimsical. And I love "cinderella" themes.

There was a movie? Maybe that's why it sounds familiar...
June 7, 2008 at 12:27 AM
Michelle Fluttering Butterflies said…
I tried reading this once before but I don't think I was ready for it. Timing seems to be everything with books..
July 21, 2008 at 2:06 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Another giveaway

This time, the publicist at WW Norton sent me two copies of The Glass of Time , by Michael Cox--so I'm giving away the second copy. Cox is the author of The Meaning of Night, and this book is the follow-up to that. Leave a comment here to enter to win it! The deadline is next Sunday, 10/5/08.
194 comments
Read more

A giveaway winner, and another giveaway

The winner of the Girl in a Blue Dress contest is... Anna, of Diary of An Eccentric ! My new contest is for a copy of The Shape of Mercy , by Susan Meissner. According to Publisher's Weekly : Meissner's newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost loves or fallen-away family members to tell them that all is forgiven and that life is too short for holding grudges. Achingly romantic, the novel features the legacy of Mercy Hayworth—a young woman convicted during the Salem witch trials—whose words reach out from the past to forever transform the lives of two present-day women. These book lovers—Abigail Boyles, elderly, bitter and frail, and Lauren Lars Durough, wealthy, earnest and young—become unlikely friends, drawn together over the untimely death of Mercy, whose precious diary is all that remains of her too short life. And what a diary! Mercy's words not only beguile but help Abigail and Lars...
115 comments
Read more

Review: The Piano Teacher, by Janice Y.K. Lee

The Piano Teacher is a complicated novel. On the surface, it’s about a love affair between two British ex-patriots in Hong Kong in 1952-3. Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong with her husband Martin at a time when the world is still recovering from WWII; Claire takes up work as a piano teacher for the daughter of a wealthy Chinese family, where she meets Will Truesdale, the Chens’ enigmatic chauffeur. The book jumps back in time between the 1950s and the beginning of WWII, when Will is interned in Stanley, a Hong Kong camp for enemies of Japan. On “the outside” is Tudy Liang, Will’s beautiful Eurasian lover. There’s no doubt that Lee’s writing is beautiful. But there’s something lacking in this short, terse novel that I can’t quite put my finger on. First, I think it’s the tenses she uses when taking about each story: that which is set in the 1950s is in the past tense, while the war scenes are talked about in the present tense (confusing, no?) The interpersonal relationships of the m...
12 comments
Read more