The Chaperone by Laura MoriartyMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
Since I was looking at chauffeur duty for a good month, I thought to do what a librarian told me works for her, listen to an audio book in her car, and read whenever she can. Take it from me, the combination of listening and reading worked like a charm. Twice a day, in the morning on my way back home, and in the evening back to the city, Elizabeth McGovern kept me engaged with her narration of the story of Cora Carlisle, and in between the rides I read.
Was it a coincidence that the main character's name is the same as that of the character our narrator Elizabeth McGovern plays in Downton Abbey? For some reason I kept on thinking, I know that voice, and I started to expect a certain behavior, and in a way Cora Carlisle and Cora Crawley née Levinson do have something in common. The times, the corset, their roles as wives and mothers in society, even if their station in life, their lifestyle and the era is (slightly) different, and one is the wife of a lawyer, the other of a British Lord.
The story of both the chaperone, and that of her charge, silent movie star Louise Brooks as a fifteen-year-old going to N.Y. City to try her luck in the dance world is compelling.
The housewife, the teen and people around them all have secrets that color their own and one another's lives.
While a historical novel, much of the subject material in The Chaperone will resonate with readers of today. Adoption, forbidden love and lust, abuse, fame and glory, Moriarty kept me engaged from the beginning to the end.
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This work by by Judith van Praag is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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