I was a poor chaperone to The Chaperone. It was left neglected, tossed aside for days and weeks during a hectic fall season of all work and no pleasure reading. I liked the book, yet made no time for it. I should have fired myself and returned the novel to the library, but I couldn't part with the characters or the story.
So I hoarded it, waiting and waiting for evenings or weekends of uncluttered serenity---which never came. Days and weeks passed after my introduction to Cora, the chaperone, and young snippy, snobby Louise Brooks, a soon-to-be professional dancer and actress whose banged and bobbed hairstyle set trends 90 years ago.
Author Laura Moriarty used the real-life story of Brooks to set her story in motion. At age 15, the aspiring starlet wanted out of Wichita, Kansas, where life was too boring, too uncultured, too small town. Her self-absorbed, detached parents didn't create a warm home life either, but they at least insisted upon a chaperone while Brooks travelled to New York for dance classes and auditions.
Enter Cora Carlisle, married mother of teenaged twin boys who signs on for the job. While her sons are baling hay and chopping wood at some remote Kansas farm, she heads for the big city. Can't say that I blame her.
Cora had moxie and for 1922, quite a lot of liberation. Even in 2013, I believe most married women would consult their husbands before leaving for five weeks to babysit another family's teenager. Not Cora. While driving home in the car she told her husband, a Wichita attorney, "I think I'll go."
Wow! What a woman, I said to myself. Just doing what she wants when opportunity knocks. And, no argument from her husband! He acquiesced in one page of dialogue? How progressive for a Wichita couple from 1922.
Oh, I should have known there'd be a reason for all that cooperation and goodwill. The Carlisles were an unusual couple, whose backstory drives much of the remainder of the novel. Turns out Cora's childhood started in an orphanage in New York City (A-ha!) and continued on the prairie after a trip on the orphan train. She and Alan, her future husband, meet a decade later when Cora needs legal advice. They marry, move to Wichita and eventually start a family. Pretty routine, right?
Uh-uh. It is anything but routine. I enjoy discovering secrets in a novel, but The Chaperone invites the reader to be included in the secret-keeping. With each page, we discover more and more about the Carlisle's unique marriage, Cora's birth mother, Louise's atypical home life, and Cora's expanding family she invites home to Kansas after her chaperoning stint in New York ends.
It's one secret--or lie?--after another. And we, as readers--are in on it all. Will the real stories come out? Will Cora deceive her family forever? Will the truth prevail?
Cora was a woman ahead of her time. At least that's what I came away believing. How and why she lived like she did kept me from parting with the book. Now that I'm finished with it, I can't believe I stalled so often.
The story is interesting, but the book allows 21st century women to drop in on the lives of our "sisters" back in the 1920s. That's one of the reasons I've been recommending this book to friends. This was the era of our grandparents' youth; our parents' birth. Stories about this time and place help fill in the details about how our families may have lived and what they might have seen and heard and thought about issues of the day. It's stuff you can't get from a family scrapbook or photo album.
I thought of my grandmothers a lot while reading. Gee, did Nana ever see Louise Brooks in silent films, I wondered. Did she ever consider bobbing her hair? Themes of children born out of wedlock and birth control surface, too. What was it like, back then, to discuss health and body issues that ruffled feathers and made many women blush? I wondered about all of this while I read.
The Chaperone was good, enjoyable. However, it's no Rules of Civility, another book set in New York in the 20s by Amor Towles. Civility has more fast-lane, upper crust sophistication. Here's how I might set them apart. Chaperone is the reliable New York subway trip that gets you where you want to go. It's a decent ride. Civility is seeing Fifth Avenue from the back of the rumble-seat. A bit wilder, more glitter and lots more fun. Our library has both books. All you have to do is decide how you want to travel.
The Push From the Book: What I'd really like to write here I can't, or I'll ruin a big part of the plot. Let me just say this. I'm forever blabbing about being born at the wrong time. I'm especially curious about the years between my parents's birth in the 20s and their youth and young adulthood in the 40s. The movies, the clothes, the simpler pace. It clicks for me.
My husband tells me I'm full of it. And I guess he's right. It wasn't the easiest of times for women, especially for those who wanted information about their bodies and birth control, which is addressed in the second half of the book. Cora takes a brave stand---she refused to join a protest against the local drugstore where condoms were sold--and then later in her life helps raise funds for unwed mothers. Time travel sounds so exotic until you encounter episodes like this in a book that confront your whims and dreams. Perhaps time travel is like going to New York City. It's nice to visit but I wouldn't want to live there. I think I'm OK where I am.
