Letter

     Only two weeks until the film of Miss Pettigrew opens in the UK, but alas there is not apparently a premiere – maybe all the kind of people who walk down red carpets are in St Tropez. Nevertheless, it will be exciting for British readers of the book finally to be able to see the film. (And here is an article about Amy Adams starring in the forthcoming film of Julie and Julia – an excellent book – with Meryl Streep.)  The dvd of Miss Pettigrew is also released in the States at the same time (although having said that I’m not sure if it’s legal to import it to the UK while the film is on general release). What is a shame for us is that a search for Miss Pettigrew on amazon.co.uk brings up, quite rightly, both the book and the audiobook; but on amazon.com you wouldn’t know it existed unless you went specifically to the audiobook section. So, although Frances McDormand’s reading has won an Audio File magazine Earphones Award ‘for exceptional audio performance’ we have had to ship most of the audiobooks back to the UK.  And I am not telling you this is order to have a moan but to give you some insight into the difficulties of being a publisher…

     There was a wonderful article by Julian Barnes last week. It was about Penelope Fitzgerald, who suggested we reprint Winifred Peck’s Housebound and wrote the Afterword. Julian Barnes has written an equally wonderful Preface to Clough’s long poem Amours de Voyage, which we publish next spring.  There was another, very different (and very funny article) in the Guardian about consumer complaints.  I read this with amazement.  Things occasionally go wrong at Persephone Books but we fall over ourselves to put everything right as politely and quickly as we can, so I read what customers have endured from large companies with disbelief.  (But not smugly – we accept that by the law of averages there must be some customers whom we have annoyed…)

   If anyone is reading this and is on holiday on Maine, or living in or near Maine, do go and see the incredible display of Persephone books at Beyond the Seas bookshop.  We are proud about, and impressed by, their love of our books.

   Finally, I have just read a brilliant novel – The Wife by Meg Wolitzer.  It is funny and profound and wise and I really cannot recommend it highly enough.  (I discovered it because her new novel, The Ten Year Nap, was reviewed in Atlantic Monthly and I looked the author up to see if we should order her books for the Notting Hill Gate shop.  We have, obviously.  Then I read The Wife, so those of you who haven’t read it – you must do so!

Nicola Beauman
Lamb’s Conduit Street
30th July 2008