Title: The Chaperone

Author: Laura Moriarty

Publish Date: June 5, 2012

Publisher: Riverhead Books

Format: Audiobook

Page Count: 13 hours, 10 minutes

Source: Library (via OverDrive)

Date Read: May 2-6, 2020

Review

A dull saga about people living in Wichita. I can't even shelve this as "historical fiction" because the historical part is so superficial, it isn't worth mentioning. This is some low-grade Lifetime Movie women's fiction crap. The author must have had a checklist of agenda items/issues she would be shoe-horning into the story, whether or not those items/issues seem related to the storyline at all. There were (in no particular order): Jim Crow/racism, Lysol as a form of birth control, gay husband, immigrants, orphans, orphan train, eugenics, other birth control, alcohol/Prohibition, workaholic dads, unfulfilled moms, etc.

The chaperone, Cora Carlisle, is a 36 year old woman living in Wichita with her husband, Alan and two sons (who are about to go off to college). She decides to chaperone fellow Wichita resident, Louise Brooks (an actual person - check out the Stuff You Missed in History Class episode), as Louise makes her way from Kansas to NYC in 1922 to study dance with the famed Denishawn Dance Company. Cora has, unsurprisingly, a reason for wanting a free trip to NYC (courtesy of Brooks' dad, who pays all expenses to get rid of the daughter) - she was an orphan and placed with a Catholic orphanage that put her on an orphan train when she was roughly 6 years old. So she went looking for information on her parents. She was quasi-adopted by a couple from McPherson, Kansas and grew up on a farm. When the couple died suddenly, she was 16 and left penniless - since she wasn't formally adopted, the couple's other children kept her out of the will and inheritance. Hiring a lawyer (the aforementioned Alan), she got enough money to live on while studying at a teacher college. Alan came calling regularly after the settlement, and they married soon after. Alan and her had relations enough times to get her pregnant with twins, and that ended any marriage stuff between them - because, surprise! Alan was hella gay with his dear friend Raymond - a fact that Cora discovered one day when she found them in bed naked together. 

She decided to stay married to keep Alan and Raymond's secret and because Alan was well off and she liked living easy and having money. While in NYC, she found out information about her mother, met her mother, and the mother was less than awesome and wanted nothing to do with Cora. Considering the unrelenting bore that constituted Cora's personality, I agree with the mother. Cora decides that a lack of affection from both gay husband and cold mother would led to an one night stand with Joseph Schmidt, the handyman at the orphanage who helped Cora gain the information about the mother. When they were discovered by the nuns when they left his apartment, he was fired and lost his apartment to boot. So Cora's big idea was for Joseph and his young daughter Greta come live with her and Alan in Wichita, going with the lie that Joseph was her brother she found in NYC and Greta her niece. Also Raymond is half-living with them as well, leaving at 10pm every night to go home to his apartment for a few hours before showing up again at the breakfast table. Joseph and her continue on their affair but on the down-low (only Alan knows what is going on between them). This is 66% of the book - one big disjointed family living in America's heartland. The other 33% is a series of false endings with finally Cora passing away at age 100. This last part was a slog to get through and the historical events were mentioned in a newspaper or television show, not really intertwined in the story at all.

Louise Brooks makes few appearances while Cora has her adventures in NYC and then goes back to Wichita yet Louise is the one that is on the cover and the blurb makes it seem Brooks and Cora have more of a connection and influence on each other; the truth is that this is almost all Cora's show and Louise is just there for a cameo. Their scenes together are the typical older woman lecturing a younger woman and cringe-fests to boot. 

The only good thing about listening to the audiobook of this dull story is having Elizabeth McGovern's voice in my ears. McGovern is probably most known for her role as Lady Cora Grantham in the Downton Abbey show and movie. She does a really good job with the accents, especially the Mid-western tone that is subtle but present and the short, terse German accent of Joseph Schmidt. 

Trying to work through my long list of book reviews that need to be written. I've got a few more - so sorry for the wave hitting your feeds. Summer has arrived here in Kansas and I've got an appointment lined up with the pool service for later this month, so hopefully by the holiday weekend I will be weekend reading from the side of the pool.

This weekend's reading will be Eisenhower 1956 all the time, as I need to get it done for Snakes and Ladders. Because of the holiday weekend at the end of the month, my IRL book club meeting is pushed up a week. I need to get started on The Chaperone, which is this month's pick. I'll be listening to that one on audio, since that is what my library's online service has and I will have more opportunity to listen than read. 

Happy May Day and Happy Reading!

Laura Moriarty's "The Chaperone" is the story of Cora, a Wichita, Kansas matron who volunteers to chaperone teenaged Louise Brooks for a summer in New York City, and the reverberations of the journey change her life forever. (Sounds like a good blurb for a movie, doesn't it? Guess why I picked up this book . . . )

I really enjoyed the novel, but it had a flaw that, although not deal-breaking, was distracting, to be honest. The typesetting on the novel was just strangely done. Of course, we all know that the space between words and sentences, and even individual letters in a manuscript is variable. When typesetting was a hand-done art, craftspersons did this work to the best of their human eyes. 

Now that these things are computerized, I do not necessarily expect "better," for art is subjective, but I do expect that it will not be noticeable. In "The Chaperone," there were many places where it seemed there was almost NO space between words -- often between sentences. And this wasn't a "fit it on the line thing"; sometimes this even happened on short lines, where another five words would have fit perfectly well. 

It was just weird, and a big quality control fail, in my opinion, for Riverhead Books (a Penguin imprint). 

-cg

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.

I love historical fiction especially when it's inspired by the life of silent-film star Louise Brooks or LuLu, what she was known as in the 20s; the actress that made the hair bob with bangs famous.

I started listening to the book as an audio book on a Greyhound trip but wasn't able to finish it on my vacation. I returned the audiobook to the library with the intent on rechecking it out but I forgot. Months later, I remembered that I hadn't finished it so I checked out the hard cover version and read the book. Even though it was months later, the reader's voice from the audio book was the voice that I used for the characters.

After you read the book you'll probably want to learn more about Louise Brooks; I know I do.

I really disliked Phillip in the last book. In this one, he starts out the same way and then gradually grows to care about someone other than himself. It was nice seeing him change and put someone else first. I appreciated his apologies to his brother and Emilia. While the other ("apology tour") worked, I thought it was unnecessary. This was a nice, fluffy read.