The Saturday Morning Post ( No. 69)

 

This week we have another of those books written by women, mostly for women, I suppose, that I enjoy, liking both small scale stories, and period pieces. This one dates back to 1938 and it can be seen as a retelling of the Cinderella story. I read it in one day. My wife, who was between books, also liked it.

At the moment, these posts are running more than two months behind my actual reading. I like to have a backlog to ensure a weekly post, but the lag is getting a bit long, and reading a book in a day, does tend to increase that backlog. I may have to go back to posting the review of two books to catch up or just slot a couple into my Wednesday blog slot when I have nothing to say, instead of  just saying nothing. We'll see.

My reviewer criteria. I like light, entertaining novels. I like smaller scale stories rather than epics. I like character focused novels featuring pleasant characters, with a minimum number of unpleasant ones. I greatly value clever and witty writing. I like first person, or close third person narratives. I dislike a lot of "head jumping" between POVs and flashbacks. I want a story, not a puzzle. While I am not opposed to violence, I dislike gore for the sake of gore. I find long and elaborate fight, action, and battle sequences tedious. Plot holes and things that happen for the convenience of the author annoy me. And I fear I'm a born critic in that I don't mind pointing out what I don't like in a story. However, I lay no claim to be the final arbitrator of style and taste, you need to decide for yourself what you like or dislike in a book.

Your opinions are always welcome. Comment below. 

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day by Winifred Watson  A-

This is a story about a penniless governess, Miss Guinevere Pettigrew, who at the start of the story, is at an employment agency and is given an address of a person wanting a governess. Standing before the block of flats, she prayed silently; 'Oh Lord! If I've ever doubted your benevolence in the past, forgive me and help me now.' She added a rider to her prayer, with the first candid confession she had ever made to her conscious mind. 'It's my last chance. You know it. I know it.'

The listing seems to be a mistake, because when she is met at the door by the lady of the flat, who was obviously dragged out of bed at 10:00 by the ringing of the doorbell, there is no child present in the flat - but there is a man, and not the lady's husband. But never mind... she's invited in, and is drawn into the hectic life of a stage actress and her bright young friends, and lives a new and wonderful life for a day.

Being lazy, I have links to two more complete reviews, if you want to know more about the story:

Strange at Ecbantan 

The Next 50

The entire story takes place within a single day. The pace is cheerfully breakneck, the characters charming, the situations, one after another, are little vignettes of the freewheeling life of young, theater people in pre-WWII London.

Winifred Watson wrote six novels, three were rural romances set in the previous century, and three were contemporary novels like this one. Henrietta Twycross-Martin wrote, in the introduction to the book;

"...they deal with the development and resolution of sexual and family tensions in ways that may flout convention and the law, but that allow women to survive and ultimately flourish." 

And she adds, having met the author when she was 93; "She said to me 'I have lived a very happy life'. And in Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day she wrote a very happy novel."  It is.

A bomb in the London Blitz drove her out of her house and into her mother-in-law's house where she lived for six years, until they could get their own again. She said that she needed to be alone to write, and by the time she and her husband move into their own home, it seems like the urge to write had passed, and with the exception of a half finished, and lost ms of another novel, she didn't write again.