I've been hearing good things about the just-released movie Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day--including that it was based on a very sweet, funny British novel written in 1938. So I looked it up, but it seems that the only copy available here in the U.S. won't be out until July. I'm looking forward to reading it, although I'm still confused as to why they didn't rush the release date a little. (Strike while the iron is hot, people! Unless July is the DVD release date...) Here's the publisher's description:

"Miss Pettigrew is about a governess sent by an employment agency to the wrong address, where she encounters a glamorous night-club singer, Miss LaFosse.'The sheer fun, the light-heartedness' in this wonderful 1938 book 'feels closer to a Fred Astaire film than anything else' comments the Preface-writer Henrietta Twycross-Martin, who found Miss Pettigrew for Persephone Books. The Guardian asked: 'Why has it taken more than half a century for this wonderful flight of humour to be rediscovered?' while the Daily Mail liked the book's message - 'that everyone, no matter how poor or prim or neglected, has a second chance to blossom in the world.' Maureen Lipman wrote in 'Books of the Year' in the Guardian: 'Perhaps the most pleasure has come from Persephone's enchanting reprints, particularly Miss Pettigrew, a fairy story set in 1930s London'; and she herself entertained R4 listeners with her five-part reading. And in The Shops India Knight called Miss Pettigrew 'the sweetest grown-up book in the world'." [Source]

Sounds promising, doesn't it? Meanwhile, I suppose I'll have to shell out the price of the movie ticket:

Labels: Long-lost authors, Movie Adaptations