Miss Pettigrew Lives for a day

Locations
Call Number: Fiction
On Shelf At: Downtown Library

Location & Checkout Length	Call Number	Checkout Length	Item Status
Downtown 2nd Floor 4-week checkout	Fiction	4-week checkout	On Shelf

Originally published: London: Methuen, 1938.

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Cozy English Story submitted by sdunav on July 23, 2016, 12:50pm A fun dance through London in 1938 (when this was written), this is the story of a middle-aged, down on her luck governess who has the chance to live the high life one day and late into the night (until 3:47 am at least).

It reminded me a lot of Jeeves & Wooster, or even Nick & Nora (but set in London) but from a women's perspective - and not so upper class. It was really a charming story, and I can see why it was rediscovered and reprinted by Persephone Classics.

A couple racist passages made me wince - things that most people wouldn't have thought twice about in 1938, I'm sure. One character is said to have a hint of Jew, although he is rather likable, you know. It is speculated that another less likable character probably had an Italian great-great grandfather.

These sentences aside, the rest of the book feels rather modern, even when it comes to morality. It doesn't paint a very pleasant picture of much of the English middle class, though. They are just not very kind, unlike the fast crowd that Miss Pettigrew falls in with quite by accident.

It's interesting that the name Pettigrew is used to represent all that is classic about the English here. I wonder if Helen Simonson (the author of Major Pettigrew's Last Stand) was inspired by this, consciously or not?