false 4 0 false false Thu Aug 20 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 20 05:39:41 -0700 2009 Thu Aug 20 05:40:02 -0700 2009
“Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day” is another bookclub selection. In truth, I was going to skip it.

But I decided to pick it up, at the last minute. And I have to admit: Winifred Watson’s 1938 novel is so lively, it’s near impossible not to love it. It reminds me almost of a scandalous version of Jane Austen’s style.

“She has to call him in her mind creature, upstart, mountebank, to save herself falling in love with him. If he had only looked at her, kissed her, the way he had Miss LaFosse, she knew she would have been his slave.”

How’s that for drama?

Peppered with delightful turns of phrase such as, “Holy suffering mackerel!”, “They’d talk the hind leg off a donkey,” “I wouldn’t take even a bilious attack!”, “Smash ‘em to smithereens,” “a damned fool,” the language is so reminiscent of the time period, you can’t help but giggle. I had black & white movie sirens and rogues playing through my head for the various characters. And I quite enjoyed it, I must say.

I think if you relish Austen and the subtle, sultry sexuality of B&W film, you will appreciate this light, Cinderella tale of a washed up, middle-aged governess who appears on the doorstep of a 20-something theatre vixen, to be swept up in a dramatic day of innocent-sin and scandal. Like a chocolate mint wafer on a day of fasting, this book is something you almost want to not like … but will find yourself helpless in its clutches *L*

“She was set for deep waters, the multitudinous seas to incarnadine.”
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