Today marks the publication of Laura Moriarty's
The Chaperone (Riverhead). Copies are just hitting stores across the country!
Moriarty's new book is the
USA Today #1 Hot Fiction Pick for the summer and an Indie Next List pick, as well as the #1 selection for "
Best Book Coming Out This June" in
O Magazine. Moriarty, who lives and teaches in Kansas, will be
touring the country in the coming weeks. Want a signed copy? Order one
here.
The Chaperone is a terrific, quietly powerful and 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 actress
and an icon of a generation, a fifteen-year-old Louise left
Wichita to make it big 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 is a complicated but traditional woman with her
own reasons for making the trip.
Cora has no idea what she’s in for: teenage Louise, already stunningly beautiful and sporting her famous blunt
bangs and black bob, is known for her arrogance and her lack of respect
for convention. Ultimately, the five weeks they spend together will
change both of their lives.
For Cora, New York holds the promise of discovery
that might prove an answer to the question at the center of her being,
and even as she does her best to watch over Louise in a strange and
bustling city, she embarks on her own mission. And while what she finds
isn’t what she anticipated, it liberates her in a way she could not have
imagined. Over the course of the summer, Cora’s 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,1930s, and beyond – from the orphan
trains to Prohibition, flappers, and the onset of the Great Depression
to the burgeoning movement for equal rights and new opportunities for
women – Moriarty’s The Chaperone illustrates how rapidly
everything, from fashion and values to hemlines and attitudes were
changing, and what a profound difference it made for the real life
Louise Brooks, the fictional Cora Carlisle, and others like them.
Recently, Moriarty answered a few questions about her new book for the Louise Brooks Society.
* * * *
How did you come to write The Chaperone? How did you come to discover the story of 15 year old Louise Brooks heading off to NY in 1922 with an older chaperone?
I was browsing in a bookstore, and I came across the book
Flapper
by Joshua Zeist. He has a chapter devoted to Louise, and I’d always
thought she was compelling. I started reading about her early life, and
right there in the bookstore, I learned about the trip with the
chaperone. Given what I already knew about Louise – that she was smart,
self-directed, and temperamental – I knew this chaperone must have had
her work cut out for her.
What is it about their story that interests you?
I’m
always interested in inter-generational tension, and 1922 strikes me as
a time when just a twenty-year gap in ages could make such a difference
between two people. If the chaperone was 36 in 1922, she would have
come of age during a time of corsets and covered ankles. The flappers
with their bared knees – and all the changing social mores that fashion
represents – would have been hard to get used to. So the chaperone might
have been challenged by any forward-thinking adolescent, let alone the
already sophisticated Louise Brooks.
I was also
intrigued by Louise’s complicated personality and story. She was both
smart and self-destructive, and I wondered about her sudden
disappearance from Hollywood. One thing that impresses me about Louise
is how authentic she was – she acted as she felt and she said what she
thought. Hollywood wasn’t the right place for her.
Did writing The Chaperone involve much research? What
were the challenges of writing about two historical figures - one of
which we know a good deal about, the other obscure?
I did a great deal
of research for this book. Researching Louise was actually the easy part
– I read her biographies and her autobiography, and I watched her
films. I even looked at her old letters to see her handwriting. But I
actually had to do more research for the chaperone, Cora, because even
though she was invented, I wanted to make her a woman of her time, to
make her someone who could have been thirty-six in 1922. But I really
liked weaving Cora’s imagined life into the real facts of Louise’s.
Were you a fan of Louise Brooks?
I
knew who she was and I thought she was striking, but I wasn’t a fan
until I started reading about her. I’m certainly a fan now.
When did you first encounter her? Is there anything you learned about Louise Brooks that surprised you?
I
don’t remember when I first learned who she was. I know I tried to copy
her haircut back in my twenties, and it completely didn’t work on me!
But it wasn’t until that day in the bookstore that I started learning
about her life.
As for surprises, there was an answer
Louise gave to a question in her old age that I found really moving. LB
fans will know, I think, what I’m alluding to, and I don’t want to ruin
it for people who haven’t yet read her biography. But late in life,
someone asked the hard and worn-down Louise if she’d ever really loved
anyone, and her answer was pretty touching. I wish I could have been a
fly on the wall when she was interacting with this person, the one
person she could admit she loved.
The Chaperone has
been described as "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." That is a wow. What's next?
Thanks!
I really have liked writing historical fiction, and my next novel will
be historical as well. I’m just starting the research now . . .
* * * *
Fans of
Downton Abbey will be thrilled to learn that actress Elizabeth McGovern reads the audio version of
The Chaperone,
which is due out in July.
McGovern has also optioned the movie rights - and yes, Cora (her
character in
Downton Abbey) could end up playing Cora in any possible film. Who might play Louise Brooks is anyone's guess. Want to find out more about this fantastic novel? Check out this
video interview with Laura Moriarty from
USA Today.
