Review: THE CHAPERONE by Laura Moriarty

Only a few years before becoming a famous silent-film star and an icon of her generation, a fifteen-year-old Louise Brooks leaves Wichita, Kansas, to study with the prestigious Denishawn School of Dancing in New York. Much to her annoyance, she is accompanied by a thirty-six-year-old chaperone, who is neither mother nor friend. Cora Carlisle, a complicated but traditional woman with her own reasons for making the trip, has no idea what she’s in for. Young Louise, already stunningly beautiful and sporting her famous black bob with blunt bangs, is known for her arrogance and her lack of respect for convention. Ultimately, the five weeks they spend together will transform their lives forever.

For Cora, the city holds the promise of discovery that might answer the question at the core of her being, and even as she does her best to watch over Louise in this strange and bustling place she embarks on a mission of her own. And while what she finds isn’t what she anticipated, she is liberated in a way she could not have imagined. Over the course of Cora’s relationship with Louise, her eyes are opened to the promise of the twentieth century and a new understanding of the possibilities for being fully alive.

Drawing on the rich history of the 1920s,’30s, and beyond—from the orphan trains to Prohibition, flappers, and the onset of the Great Depression to the burgeoning movement for equal rights and new opportunities for women—Laura Moriarty’s The Chaperone illustrates how rapidly everything, from fashion and hemlines to values and attitudes, was changing at this time and what a vast difference it all made for Louise Brooks, Cora Carlisle, and others like them.

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I've had a library hold request on THE CHAPERONE since early summer, and I finally got my turn to read it. Now I'm wishing I had bought my own copy months ago, because I absolutely loved it!

The story is about Cora Carlisle, a 36-year old Kansas housewife and mother of two grown sons, who accompanies a neighbor's teenage daughter on a trip to New York City in the summer of 1922. The girl is Louise Brooks, who would one day be a famous Hollywood star of the silent film era. But in 1922, Louise is a wild and willful 15-year old in need of supervision.

There's much more to the story than Cora babysitting Louise while she takes dance lessons in New York. Cora has her own agenda for making the trip. Her life has become stagnant and the unknowns from her past are partly to blame. What she discovers in New York is the catalyst that changes her life and her way of thinking.

I enjoyed how the author constructed the story, weaving bits of Cora's past into the plot with Louise so we can see the events that shaped her. Many issues are touched on in this book, including women's plight in the early 20th century, child welfare, homosexuality and prejudice. Louise was a tragic figure and difficult to take a times, but she was a product of her past, just like Cora. At least I had a understanding of why she was so difficult.

I loved this book and would recommend it to fans of women's fiction and historical fiction. The book covers the 1890s through the early 1970s, though the main story takes place in 1922. I got pretty attached to the characters in this book, and I was teary-eyed reading the last 13 pages and seeing their stories wrap up. THE CHAPERONE is definitely a top three favorite of mine for 2012.

Notable Quote:

“The young can exasperate, of course, and frighten, and condescend, and insult, and cut you with their still unrounded edges. But they can also drag you, as you protest and scold and try to pull away, right up to the window of the future, and even push you through.”