The Chaperone

In Laura Moriarty's The Chaperone, 15-year-old Louise Brooks escapes an unhappy home in Wichita for the big lights of New York City. She makes the trip in the watchful company of fellow Wichitan Cora Carlisle, who seemingly has it all - a handsome husband, a lovely home, college-bound twin sons, and the respect and admiration of every lady worth her salt in or around Wichita. What neither woman can know of the other is the baggage that each carries with her to New York in the form of rather dark secrets from the past.

Louise Brooks was a real person. I first heard of her when I read Flapper earlier this year. She was a silent film star who made it big - bigger than even Clara Bow, perhaps - before being (mostly) lost to history. She really did travel to New York in the summer of 1922 in the company of a chaperone, one Alice Mills. After a few mostly fruitless searches for information on Alice Mills, I have the impression that Moriarty likely came to the quick conclusion that a true-to-life historical fiction in the mold of The Paris Wife wasn't feasible (and might have been far less interesting even had it been) and so created her own chaperone, with a vibrant, twisting story of her own.

All of which is fine and dandy but the question, of course, is what did I make of The Chaperone? It was a good vacation read - easy to pick up and put down, with relatively few characters and a memorable plot that didn't have me turning back the pages to remember one or another obscure detail. That said, it wasn't such a page turner that I ever felt a pang at having to lay it aside and, generally, I felt it was a rather middling read. I much preferred Alice I Have Been or, more recently, The House at Tyneford to The Chaperone. I was more than a bit surprised to discover that it's being adapted into a movie and that Julian Fellowes is writing the screenplay - with Cora Carlisle being played by Cora Crawley, I mean Elizabeth McGovern, herself. If you know me at all, you already knew that I have no plans to see the movie.