The Chaperone

“The Chaperone” by Laura Moriarty was a favorite of book bloggers when it came out in June. It’s my first audiobook I listened to without being on a road trip. Instead I listened to it while either out walking or gardening in my yard, which I found quite enjoyable, though it took me a few weeks to get through the 9½ hour or so audio.

Many know by now the novel’s about a 36-year-old woman named Cora Carlisle who chaperones a precocious 15-year-old Louise Brooks from Wichita, Kansas, to New York City in 1922 to attend a prestigious dance school. The housewife Cora is quite the traditional, corset-wearing lady of the times, whereas Louise is oppositely unconventional and misbehaved. Their relationship while in NYC is challenging at best, but what happens to each during the summer of 1922 alters the course of their lives. Louise goes on to become a silent-film star of the era, and Cora, through a variety of circumstances, becomes more open and liberated in life, aiding single mothers, for one, and endorsing contraception.

At first, I wasn’t sure if the story was for me because the characters and times it depicts start off so prim and proper and repressed. The moral values are pretty heavy-handed, and the story seems quite pat and tidy. But as I kept listening, it picked up and spread its wings so to speak. I was amazed by the fine storytelling and the breadth of the novel, how it tells of Cora’s and Louise’s lives through the backdrop of history, of orphan trains and Prohibition times, and the details of what people wore and thought. It covers a lot of ground. Cora is well into her 90s by the end. I felt like I knew her and that her story was real and that I would miss her. It’s a bit crazy to think, but it grew on me as both Cora and Louise came to life.

Perhaps it was also Elizabeth McGovern’s fine narration of the novel that won me over. No wonder she’s in the excellent “Downton Abbey” TV series. She engulfs the roles in “The Chaperone.” Maybe she’s a natural throwback to the early twentieth century.

But dumbly it was not till after the audio that I found out that Louise Brooks was indeed a real person and silent-film star of the era. Author Laura Moriarty cleverly uses that one real summer accompanied by a chaperone in 1922 to create a fictional account of Cora and her life alongside the real Louise and that of history. Louise and Cora might not have ended up as true deep friends, but they did benefit from one another, and the story of their lives is touching.