‘Miss Pettigrew’ by Winifred Watson

   "Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day" is a Cinderella story for grown-ups.
   The novel, by English author Winifred Watson, became a best-seller when it came out in 1938 (published by Methuen, reprinted in 2008 by Persephone Books, London). Now it’s a movie starring Frances McDormand and Amy Adams. See the movie. But treat yourself and read the book, too. It’s a gem.
    Middle-aged, dowdy Miss Guinevere Pettigrew has just about come to the end of her luck — not that anyone would have ever thought her lucky. As a curate’s daughter now alone in the world, she leads a life of shabby gentility. She’s out of work and virtually penniless; once again she has been fired from a position as a nanny. She is going to be homeless and in the workhouse if  she doesn’t find a new job — fast. (And  English workhouses — those grim institutions for paupers, where the able-bodied were required to labor, were no place anyone wanted to be.)
    An employment agency sends Miss Pettigrew to the wrong address, the exclusive London flat of a beautiful young nightclub singer. Miss Delysia LaFosse has no children, but she has several passionate suitors, a shocking situation for the sheltered Miss Pettigrew, and big trouble for the ditsy beauty. As our heroine helps the scatterbrained but kind-hearted Miss LaFosse sort out her complicated love life, Miss Pettigrew experiences 24 hours that will turn her own life around.