The Chaperone

A friend lent me her copy of Laura Moriarty's The Chaperone (#279), so I read it.  If you like historical fiction set in the Roaring 20s, you might enjoy it.  It's not a time period that appeals to me particularly, and I can't say that The Chaperone does much to change my mind about the era.

Cora Carlisle is the eponymous chaperone to soon-to-be silent film star, Louise Brooks, when she accompanies the wild child Louise from their home in Wichita, Kansas to a fateful summer dance school in New York City with the famed Denishawn modern dance company.

Frankly, I expected there to be more about Louise Brooks in the story, but if you merely skim the Wikipedia entry on her, you'll learn everything this book reveals about her and much more besides.  Enough so that you know exactly what the hidden emotions are in many of the conversations between Cora and Louise, neither of whom like each other.  (Spoiler alert: if you prefer to be surprised by the revelations unfolding in the novel, don't look at the Wikipedia site until after you've read the book.)  In fact, the most surprising thing I learned about Louise Brooks, whose iconic bob hair cut defined the look of the 20s, was that the photo on the cover of The Chaperone is actually an image of Louise, minus the famous bangs and the recognizable bob.

Cora herself didn't capture my imagination or my sympathy when she uses the opportunity to act as Louise's chaperone as a chance to explore the secrets from her past.  Of course Cora has secrets.   Otherwise there wouldn't be much point in writing a fictional story about her, would there?  I absolutely did not buy Cora's contrived romance, nor the neatly tied up resolution to how she gets to bring home her lover permanently.  Not for a moment.  And after I stopped caring, I didn't need the remainder of the novel to recount the rest of  her life right up until her deathbed many years later. (After she plays a significant role in Wichita's Civil Rights Movement, of course!)

But I think the thing that really bugged me the most about this book were the linguistic anachronisms that jumped out of the text and made me lose the thread of the narrative.  Ms. Moriarty includes a bibliography of reference materials she used in preparing this book.  Perhaps it would have been useful to consult some books about Catholicism and religious orders, or even to have spoken to someone who could remember the pre-Vatican II days to correct her errors, and perhaps paint a more balanced picture of the nuns depicted in this book.  Yes, I knew scary nuns growing up, but Moriarity's Sister Delores is so far over the top as to be an offensive caricature. 

But perhaps the low light of the entire book for me was the scene where Mary O'Dell corrects Cora on her pronunciation of the town of Haverhill, Massachusetts.  Cora is angry and offended when Mrs. O'Dell blithely tells her what's wrong with her pronunciation, and spells out the "proper" way to say it.  Oh, if only Mrs. O'Dell had done that, and not compounded the problem by attributing a three syllable pronunciation to the city's name.  Tut, tut, Ms. Moriarty.  Get your facts straight!

The Chaperone isn't a terrible book, but not one that I would recommend, either.  As I said, if you're a fan of The Paris Wife or Z, this book may be of interest to you, otherwise, you might want to find something else in your pile of books to read.