β Scribed by Laura Moriarty
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
USA Today's #1 Hot Fiction Pick for the summer, The Chaperone is a captivating novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in 1922 and the summer that would change them both.
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 shes 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.
For Cora, the city holds the promise of discovery that might answer the question at the core of her being, and even as she does her best to watch over Louise in this strange and bustling place she embarks on a mission of her own. And while what she finds isnt what she anticipated, she is liberated in a way she could not have imagined. Over the course of Coras relationship with Louise, her eyes are opened to the promise of the twentieth century and a new understanding of the possibilities for being fully alive.
Drawing on the rich history of the 1920s,30s, and beyondfrom the orphan trains to Prohibition, flappers, and the onset of the Great Depression to the burgeoning movement for equal rights and new opportunities for womenLaura Moriartys The Chaperone illustrates how rapidly everything, from fashion and hemlines to values and attitudes, was changing at this time and what a vast difference it all made for Louise Brooks, Cora Carlisle, and others like them.
Curtis Sittenfeld interviews Laura Moriarty.
Curtis Sittenfeld Sittenfeld is the author of the bestselling novels American Wife , Prep, and The Man of My Dreams , which have been translated into twenty-five languages. Here she talks with novelist Laura Moriarty about her experiences writing The Chaperone.
Curtis Sittenfeld: You tell the story of two characters whose trajectories overlap--Louise Brooks before she becomes famous, and quietly complicated housewife Cora Carlisle, who serves as 15-year-old Louises chaperone in New York in the fateful summer of 1922. Did you always know they belonged in a book together, or did you decide to write about one of them first?
Laura Moriarty: I always found Louise Brooks interesting. She was an icon of the silent-film era, and I knew shed grown up in Kansas, and that she was smart and rebellious and sharp-tongued. But it wasnt until I learned that shed first gone to New York as a teenager with a 36-year-old chaperone that I saw a story I wanted to write. Im drawn to intergenerational tension, and it must have been strong in the 1920s: I wondered how Louises generation of flappers appeared to the women who came of age at the beginning of the century--wearing corsets, long skirts, and high collars. This older generation of women had campaigned for suffrage and prohibition of alcohol; they must have been bewildered by the very different values and sensibilities of their daughters. I liked the idea of a chaperone, someone thrown into this dynamic all at once.
Sittenfeld: Were you a fan of Louise Brooks specifically, or of movies from the 1920s and 1930s generally, or were you exploring an art form unfamiliar to you when you started writing this novel?
Moriarty: I wasnt that familiar with silent films. I didnt know, for example, how hugely popular silent films were in the 1920s, how people would go to the movies several times a week. While I was writing the book, I went to see Louise Brooks most famous film, Pandoras Box, at the Tivoli in Kansas City, and it was a lovely experience. You can watch old silent films on DVD or even on YouTube, but it was a different feeling watching her up on the big screen, seeing the film the way people saw it all those years ago.
Sittenfeld: Youve clearly done a lot of research. What form did your research take? Were there discoveries you made--about Brooks, or the early twentieth century, or Wichita--that particularly captured your imagination? Was there any incredibly juicy details you came across that just didnt belong in the book?
Moriarty: One of the first things I did, and maybe the most important, was drive down to Wichita and walk around Union Station, where Louise and her chaperone disembarked for New York in 1922. Its boarded up now, but just seeing the physical place helped me see the story and the journey as real. I read Louises autobiography and Barry Pariss biography of her. I read oral histories of Manhattan in the 20s, and I read travel guides from that era as well. I spent a lot of time learning about 1920s fashion, not just what flappers were wearing, but what most women were wearing, what men were wearing. Overall I learned a lot of details about 1920s clothes, cars, kitchen appliances, and food. I had a character eating peanut butter in one scene until I learned that peanut butter wasnt commercially packaged and sold until 1924. But the biggest challenge was probably getting into the psychology of someone living in that erato know her values, and how she saw the world.
Heres an interesting bit about Louise that didnt get in the book: After she became famous, she and some friends were dining in a restaurant in Europe; she was bored, and she spotted a man shed been friendly with, and she asked the waiter to summon him. The man didnt come over right away because he was with a woman, and he didnt want to be rude. When he finally did go over to Louises table, apologizing and explaining his delay, she picked up a bouquet of roses and sliced him across the face with it, the thorns actually cutting his skin so his face was dripping blood. This story, to me, says a lot about the dark side of Louises personality. Yes, she was beautiful and intelligent, and she could be very funny, but obviously there was a deep insecurity there, a real destructive rage and immaturity. I couldnt work that scene into the book, but I knew what it told me about Louise, and I thought about it when I was writing her scenes with Cora.
Sittenfeld: One of your characters was part of the Orphan Train, which placed children with Midwestern families (who also happened to be strangers!). Is her experience based on that of anyone real, or is it more of an amalgamation?
Moriarty: The thing that got me about the Orphan Trains was that the experiences were so varied. Some of the kids went from neglect and hunger in New York to loving farm families who couldnt wait to fatten them up, who gave them medical care, an education, affection. And some of the kids became the victims of terrible cruelty, and more hunger, and more neglect--it all depended on who adopted them off of the train. Because the experiences of the children were so varied, I wouldnt say this characters experience is an amalgamation, though she isnt based on any one real person either. Her story is just what could have happened to a child, and what probably did happen to many of them.
Sittenfeld: Like Cora, you yourself live in Kansas, and youve set earlier fiction there. What do you like about writing and living in a place thats not considered a literary hotbed? (Admittedly, I ask this as someone who lives in nearby Missouri!)
Moriarty: I love my town, Lawrence, Kansas, so Im glad I get to live here. Ive never felt that wanting to write required me to live in New York. There are so many great authors living there, of course, but I can get their books here, or I can read their stories online or in journals. And theres a great community of writers right here in my town. I teach creative writing at the University of Kansas, and I have creative colleagues and thoughtful graduate students, and I have a writing group I meet with almost every week. I suppose its a little humbling to write from Kansas. I know Im not at the literary center of the universe. But that might not be a bad thing.
Sittenfeld: I want to ask you a variation of a question Ive been asked. I wrote a novel, American Wife, that borrowed from the life of a real person--Laura Bush--but I changed her name. Youve written about a real person--Louise Brooksand used her real name, but shes no longer living. Do you feel any moral qualms about portraying a real person saying and doing things that youve made up?
Moriarty: I was so excited about this book when I started it that I didnt have a lot of moral qualms. But the more I read about Louise and the more I wrote about her, the more I started to really care for her, and I did worry about getting her right, portraying her in a way that was accurate. I tried to keep my depiction true to what I learned from her autobiography and biographies about her. Its impossible to know what shed think of my portrayal, but I hope she would approve. In any case, I dont think Louise Brooks ever lost too much sleep over what other people thought of her.
Sittenfeld: Your descriptions of Cora wearing a corset are incredibly convincing. Did you--for the sake of research, of course--ever try one on yourself?
Moriarty: I dont think Ive ever tried on a corset, though a certain bridesmaids dress did require a torturous bustier that will stay forever burned in my sensory memory.
Photo of Curtis Sittenfeld Ryan Kurtz
Photo of Laura Moriarty Tracy Rasmussen
"The Chaperone is the enthralling story of two women . . . and how their unlikely relationship changed their lives. . . . In this layered and inventive story, Moriarty raises profound questions about family, sexuality, history, and whether it is luck or willor a sturdy combination of the twothat makes for a wonderful life."O, The Oprah Magazine
"In her new novel, The Chaperone, Laura Morirty treats this golden age with an evocative look at the early life of silent-film icon Louise Brooks, who in 1922 leaves Wichita, Kansas, for New York City in the company of 36-year-old chaperone, Cora Carlisle. . . . A mesmerizing take on women in this pivotal era."Vogue
"With her shiny black bob and milky skin, Louise Brooks epitomized silent-film glamour. But in Laura Moriarty's engaging new novel The Chaperone, Brooks is just a hyper-precocious and bratty 15-year-old, and our protagonist, 36-year-old Cora Carlisle, has the not-easy mission of keeping the teenager virtuous while on a trip from their native Kansas to New York City. After a battle of wills, there's a sudden change of destiny for both women, with surprising and poignant results."Entertainment Weekly
"Throughout The Chaperone, her fourth and best novel, Laura Moriarty mines first-rate fiction from the tension between a corrupting coastal media and the ideal of heart-of-America morality. . . . . Brooks's may be the novel's marquee name, but the story's heart is Cora's. With much sharpness but great empathy, Moriarty lays bare the settled mindset of this stolid, somewhat fearful womanand the new experiences that shake that mindset up."San Francisco Weekly
"Film star Louise Brooks was a legend in her time, but the real lead of The Chaperone is Cora Carlise, Brooks' 36-year-old chaperone for her first visit to New York City in 1922. As Cora struggles to tame Louise's free spirit, she finds herself moving past the safety of her own personal boundaries. In this fictional account of Cora and Louise's off-and-on relationship, Laura Moriarty writes with grace and compassion about life's infinite possibilities for change and, ultimately, happiness."Minneapolis Star Tribune
When silent film star Louise Brooks was a sexually provocative and headstrong 15-year-old from Kansas, she traveled with a chaperone to new York City to attend dance school. In this fascinating historical novel, her minder, Cora, struggles to keep her charge within the bounds of propriety but finds herself questioning the confines of her own life. Thorough Cora the world of early 20th-century America comes alive, and her personal triumphs become cause for celebration.People
"#1 Summer 2012 novel."*The Christian Science Monitor
*"A fun romp."*Good Housekeeping
*"Devour it."*Marie Claire
*"The novel is captivating, and the last lines about Cora (you might think Im giving everything away, but Im not giving anything awaythe story rolls through changes in terrain so subtle that its like a train from Wichita to New York and back) capsulate it all, revealing the richness of the saga.*The Daily Beast
*"The Chaperone," an enchanting, luminous new novel by Laura Moriarty, fictionalizes the tale of the very real caretaker who accompanied a 15-year-old Louise Brooks on the first leg of her journey to silent-movie stardom. . . . Moriarty is a lovely writer, warm and wise."*Cleveland Plain Dealer
*"It is [Louise Brooks's] endearing and surprising companion Cora Carlislea sharply drawn creatingwho is the heart and soul of this stirring story.*Family Circle*
Set to be the hit of the beach read season.Matchbook
The challenges of historical fiction are plentifulhow to freely imagine a person who really lived, how to impart modern sensibility to a bygone era, how to do your research without exactly showing your research. And yet, when this feat is achieved artfully (were talking Loving Frank or Arthur and George artfully), it can transport a reader to another time and place. Laura Moriartys new novel, The Chaperone, falls into this category.Bookpage
Its impossible not to be completely drawn in by The Chaperone. Laura Moriarty has delivered the richest and realest possible heroine in Cora Carlisle, a Wichita housewife who has her mind and heart blown wide open, and stepswith uncommon courageinto the fullness of her life. What a beautiful book. I loved every page.Paula McLain, author of *The Paris Wife
What a charming, mesmerizing, transporting novel! The characters are so fully realized that I felt I was right there alongside them. A beautiful clarity marks both the style and structure of The Chaperone*.Sena Jeter Naslund, author of* Ahab's Wife and Adam & Eve
The Chaperone is the best kind of historical fiction, transporting you to another time and place, but even more importantly delivering a poignant story about people so real, you'll miss and remember them long after you close the book.Jenna Blum, author of Those Who Save Us and The Stormchasers*
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