Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (1938)

Just as lovely as the film was, but a tad different. There's cocaine and strange-to-our-generation language in the book (absent from the film) and some glorious one-liners that didn't make it into the film. I loved each medium for this story equally for different reasons. I suggest you do both!
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I really enjoyed this light, enchanting novel. Lots of fun. Loved the banter and the continual misunderstandings. I also loved the movie. While it didn't follow the book, as movies usually don't, I still found them equally engaging. ( )

I liked this mainly because my son bought it for me. It was an ok read, but that's all. ( )

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is warm-hearted and engaging, and much too good to be dismissed as mere romantic whimsy, although it is undeniably both romantic and whimsical. Miss Pettigrew, impoverished spinster, following a last desperate lead on a governess position, falls into the company of Deylisia LaFosse and is instantly embroiled in a hitherto unimagined world of indelicate entanglements. To her surprise she not only enjoys, but excels at, un-entwining Miss LaFosse from her complicated love-life.

Nice, frothy dialogue and delightful inner musings make this a joy to read. Its apparent surface shallowness (everyone is beautiful, or made so, and everything fun is idealised) does have some depth to it after all, but even if it did not the sheer magnificence of the character of Miss Pettigrew would save the day.

A new favourite. ( )

This is a delightful re-writing of “Cinderella” from the 1930s – I tend to expect wordy, rather dull novels to come out of that time period, but aside from some old fashioned attitudes to violence, this could have been written last week. It’s totally readable, perfect to escape into, if Enid Blyton had written adult novels I reckon this is the sort of thing she would have written.

Miss Pettigrew, an impoverished spinster and “not very good” governess who can’t tell cocaine from Beecham’s Powders, ends up by some mix up in the home of a nightclub singer, becomes adopted as her best buddy and discovers a talent for seeing off unwanted cads.

It’s such fun to read: one wants the downtrodden Miss Pettigrew to succeed, and against all her expectations things go swimmingly, though lurking at the edge of consciousness is the question of what will happen at the end of the day: will Miss Pettigrew have to return to her previous life? There was so much humour (I loved the fish v ice cream tirade) not to mention some good illustrations. A surprising and enjoyable book. ( )