Author: Andrew Barker
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 1571135316
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
A varied, vivid view of the literary culture of the often-neglected interwar Austrian republic. The literary flair of fin-de-siècle Vienna lived on after 1918 in the First Austrian Republic even as writers grappled with the consequences of a lost war and the vanished Habsburg Empire. Reacting to historical and political issues often distinct from those in Weimar Germany, Austrian literary culture, though frequently associated with Jewish writers deeply attached to the concept of an independent Austria, reflected the republic's ever-deepening antisemitism and the growing clamor for political union with Germany. Spanning the two momentous decades between the fall of the empire in 1918 and the Nazi Anschluss in 1938, this book explores work by canonical writers suchas Schnitzler, Kraus, Roth, and Werfel and by now-forgotten figures such as the pacifist Andreas Latzko, the arch-Nazi Bruno Brehm, and the fervently Jewish Soma Morgenstern. Also taken into account are Ernst Weiss's "Hitler" novel Der Augenzeuge and 1930s works about First Republic Austria by the German Communist writers Anna Seghers and Friedrich Wolf. Andrew Barker's book paints a varied and vivid picture of one of the most challenging and underresearched periods in twentieth-century cultural history. Andrew Barker is Emeritus Professor of Austrian Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Fictions from an Orphan State
Author: Andrew Barker
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 1571135316
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
A varied, vivid view of the literary culture of the often-neglected interwar Austrian republic. The literary flair of fin-de-siècle Vienna lived on after 1918 in the First Austrian Republic even as writers grappled with the consequences of a lost war and the vanished Habsburg Empire. Reacting to historical and political issues often distinct from those in Weimar Germany, Austrian literary culture, though frequently associated with Jewish writers deeply attached to the concept of an independent Austria, reflected the republic's ever-deepening antisemitism and the growing clamor for political union with Germany. Spanning the two momentous decades between the fall of the empire in 1918 and the Nazi Anschluss in 1938, this book explores work by canonical writers suchas Schnitzler, Kraus, Roth, and Werfel and by now-forgotten figures such as the pacifist Andreas Latzko, the arch-Nazi Bruno Brehm, and the fervently Jewish Soma Morgenstern. Also taken into account are Ernst Weiss's "Hitler" novel Der Augenzeuge and 1930s works about First Republic Austria by the German Communist writers Anna Seghers and Friedrich Wolf. Andrew Barker's book paints a varied and vivid picture of one of the most challenging and underresearched periods in twentieth-century cultural history. Andrew Barker is Emeritus Professor of Austrian Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Publisher: Camden House
ISBN: 1571135316
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216
Book Description
A varied, vivid view of the literary culture of the often-neglected interwar Austrian republic. The literary flair of fin-de-siècle Vienna lived on after 1918 in the First Austrian Republic even as writers grappled with the consequences of a lost war and the vanished Habsburg Empire. Reacting to historical and political issues often distinct from those in Weimar Germany, Austrian literary culture, though frequently associated with Jewish writers deeply attached to the concept of an independent Austria, reflected the republic's ever-deepening antisemitism and the growing clamor for political union with Germany. Spanning the two momentous decades between the fall of the empire in 1918 and the Nazi Anschluss in 1938, this book explores work by canonical writers suchas Schnitzler, Kraus, Roth, and Werfel and by now-forgotten figures such as the pacifist Andreas Latzko, the arch-Nazi Bruno Brehm, and the fervently Jewish Soma Morgenstern. Also taken into account are Ernst Weiss's "Hitler" novel Der Augenzeuge and 1930s works about First Republic Austria by the German Communist writers Anna Seghers and Friedrich Wolf. Andrew Barker's book paints a varied and vivid picture of one of the most challenging and underresearched periods in twentieth-century cultural history. Andrew Barker is Emeritus Professor of Austrian Studies at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland.
Orphan Island
Author: Laurel Snyder
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062443437
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 162
Book Description
A National Book Award Longlist title! "A wondrous book, wise and wild and deeply true." —Kelly Barnhill, Newbery Medal-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon "This is one of those books that haunts you long after you read it. Thought-provoking and magical." —Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series In the tradition of modern-day classics like Sara Pennypacker's Pax and Lois Lowry's The Giver comes a deep, compelling, heartbreaking, and completely one-of-a-kind novel about nine children who live on a mysterious island. On the island, everything is perfect. The sun rises in a sky filled with dancing shapes; the wind, water, and trees shelter and protect those who live there; when the nine children go to sleep in their cabins, it is with full stomachs and joy in their hearts. And only one thing ever changes: on that day, each year, when a boat appears from the mist upon the ocean carrying one young child to join them—and taking the eldest one away, never to be seen again. Today’s Changing is no different. The boat arrives, taking away Jinny’s best friend, Deen, replacing him with a new little girl named Ess, and leaving Jinny as the new Elder. Jinny knows her responsibility now—to teach Ess everything she needs to know about the island, to keep things as they’ve always been. But will she be ready for the inevitable day when the boat will come back—and take her away forever from the only home she’s known? "A unique and compelling story about nine children who live with no adults on a mysterious island. Anyone who has ever been scared of leaving their family will love this book" (from the Brightly.com review, which named Orphan Island a best book of 2017).
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062443437
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 162
Book Description
A National Book Award Longlist title! "A wondrous book, wise and wild and deeply true." —Kelly Barnhill, Newbery Medal-winning author of The Girl Who Drank the Moon "This is one of those books that haunts you long after you read it. Thought-provoking and magical." —Rick Riordan, author of the Percy Jackson series In the tradition of modern-day classics like Sara Pennypacker's Pax and Lois Lowry's The Giver comes a deep, compelling, heartbreaking, and completely one-of-a-kind novel about nine children who live on a mysterious island. On the island, everything is perfect. The sun rises in a sky filled with dancing shapes; the wind, water, and trees shelter and protect those who live there; when the nine children go to sleep in their cabins, it is with full stomachs and joy in their hearts. And only one thing ever changes: on that day, each year, when a boat appears from the mist upon the ocean carrying one young child to join them—and taking the eldest one away, never to be seen again. Today’s Changing is no different. The boat arrives, taking away Jinny’s best friend, Deen, replacing him with a new little girl named Ess, and leaving Jinny as the new Elder. Jinny knows her responsibility now—to teach Ess everything she needs to know about the island, to keep things as they’ve always been. But will she be ready for the inevitable day when the boat will come back—and take her away forever from the only home she’s known? "A unique and compelling story about nine children who live with no adults on a mysterious island. Anyone who has ever been scared of leaving their family will love this book" (from the Brightly.com review, which named Orphan Island a best book of 2017).
Orphan #8
Author: Kim van Alkemade
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
ISBN: 9780062338303
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
New York Times and USA Today Bestseller In this stunning new historical novel inspired by true events, Kim van Alkemade tells the fascinating story of a woman who must choose between revenge and mercy when she encounters the doctor who subjected her to dangerous medical experiments in a New York City Jewish orphanage years before. In 1919, Rachel Rabinowitz is a vivacious four-year-old living with her family in a crowded tenement on New York City’s Lower Eastside. When tragedy strikes, Rachel is separated from her brother Sam and sent to a Jewish orphanage where Dr. Mildred Solomon is conducting medical research. Subjected to X-ray treatments that leave her disfigured, Rachel suffers years of cruel harassment from the other orphans. But when she turns fifteen, she runs away to Colorado hoping to find the brother she lost and discovers a family she never knew she had. Though Rachel believes she’s shut out her painful childhood memories, years later she is confronted with her dark past when she becomes a nurse at Manhattan’s Old Hebrews Home and her patient is none other than the elderly, cancer-stricken Dr. Solomon. Rachel becomes obsessed with making Dr. Solomon acknowledge, and pay for, her wrongdoing. But each passing hour Rachel spends with the old doctor reveal to Rachel the complexities of her own nature. She realizes that a person’s fate—to be one who inflicts harm or one who heals—is not always set in stone. Lush in historical detail, rich in atmosphere and based on true events, Orphan #8 is a powerful, affecting novel of the unexpected choices we are compelled to make that can shape our destinies.
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks
ISBN: 9780062338303
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
New York Times and USA Today Bestseller In this stunning new historical novel inspired by true events, Kim van Alkemade tells the fascinating story of a woman who must choose between revenge and mercy when she encounters the doctor who subjected her to dangerous medical experiments in a New York City Jewish orphanage years before. In 1919, Rachel Rabinowitz is a vivacious four-year-old living with her family in a crowded tenement on New York City’s Lower Eastside. When tragedy strikes, Rachel is separated from her brother Sam and sent to a Jewish orphanage where Dr. Mildred Solomon is conducting medical research. Subjected to X-ray treatments that leave her disfigured, Rachel suffers years of cruel harassment from the other orphans. But when she turns fifteen, she runs away to Colorado hoping to find the brother she lost and discovers a family she never knew she had. Though Rachel believes she’s shut out her painful childhood memories, years later she is confronted with her dark past when she becomes a nurse at Manhattan’s Old Hebrews Home and her patient is none other than the elderly, cancer-stricken Dr. Solomon. Rachel becomes obsessed with making Dr. Solomon acknowledge, and pay for, her wrongdoing. But each passing hour Rachel spends with the old doctor reveal to Rachel the complexities of her own nature. She realizes that a person’s fate—to be one who inflicts harm or one who heals—is not always set in stone. Lush in historical detail, rich in atmosphere and based on true events, Orphan #8 is a powerful, affecting novel of the unexpected choices we are compelled to make that can shape our destinies.
The Orphan in Fiction and Comics since the 19th Century
Author: Marion Gymnich
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527515702
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 323
Book Description
The orphan has turned out to be an extraordinarily versatile literary figure. By juxtaposing diverse fictional representations of orphans, this volume sheds light on the development of cultural concepts such as childhood, family, the status of parental legacy, individualism, identity and charity. The first chapter argues that the figure of the orphan was suitable for negotiating a remarkable range of cultural anxieties and discourses in novels from the Victorian period. This is followed by a discussion of both the (rare) examples of novels from the first half of the 20th century in which main characters are orphaned at a young age and Anglophone narratives written from the 1980s onward, when the figure of the orphan proliferated once more. The trope of the picaro, the theme of absence and the problem of parental substitutes are among the issues addressed in contemporary orphan narratives. The book also looks at the orphan motif in three popular fantasy series, namely Rowling’s Harry Potter septology, Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy and Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. It then traces the development of the orphan motif from the end of the 19th century to the present in a range of different types of comics, including funnies and gag-a-day strips, superhero comics, underground comix, and autobiographical comics.
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1527515702
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 323
Book Description
The orphan has turned out to be an extraordinarily versatile literary figure. By juxtaposing diverse fictional representations of orphans, this volume sheds light on the development of cultural concepts such as childhood, family, the status of parental legacy, individualism, identity and charity. The first chapter argues that the figure of the orphan was suitable for negotiating a remarkable range of cultural anxieties and discourses in novels from the Victorian period. This is followed by a discussion of both the (rare) examples of novels from the first half of the 20th century in which main characters are orphaned at a young age and Anglophone narratives written from the 1980s onward, when the figure of the orphan proliferated once more. The trope of the picaro, the theme of absence and the problem of parental substitutes are among the issues addressed in contemporary orphan narratives. The book also looks at the orphan motif in three popular fantasy series, namely Rowling’s Harry Potter septology, Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy and Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. It then traces the development of the orphan motif from the end of the 19th century to the present in a range of different types of comics, including funnies and gag-a-day strips, superhero comics, underground comix, and autobiographical comics.
Orphan Train Girl
Author: Christina Baker Kline
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062445960
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 127
Book Description
This young readers’ edition of Christina Baker Kline’s #1 New York Times bestselling novel Orphan Train follows a twelve-year-old foster girl who forms an unlikely bond with a ninety-one-year-old woman. Adapted and condensed for a young audience, Orphan Train Girl includes an author’s note and archival photos from the orphan train era. This book is especially perfect for mother/daughter reading groups. Molly Ayer has been in foster care since she was eight years old. Most of the time, Molly knows it’s her attitude that’s the problem, but after being shipped from one family to another, she’s had her fair share of adults treating her like an inconvenience. So when Molly’s forced to help an a wealthy elderly woman clean out her attic for community service, Molly is wary. But from the moment they meet, Molly realizes that Vivian isn’t like any of the adults she’s encountered before. Vivian asks Molly questions about her life and actually listens to the answers. Soon Molly sees they have more in common than she thought. Vivian was once an orphan, too—an Irish immigrant to New York City who was put on a so-called "orphan train" to the Midwest with hundreds of other children—and she can understand, better than anyone else, the emotional binds that have been making Molly’s life so hard. Together, they not only clear boxes of past mementos from Vivian’s attic, but forge a path of friendship, forgiveness, and new beginnings.
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062445960
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 127
Book Description
This young readers’ edition of Christina Baker Kline’s #1 New York Times bestselling novel Orphan Train follows a twelve-year-old foster girl who forms an unlikely bond with a ninety-one-year-old woman. Adapted and condensed for a young audience, Orphan Train Girl includes an author’s note and archival photos from the orphan train era. This book is especially perfect for mother/daughter reading groups. Molly Ayer has been in foster care since she was eight years old. Most of the time, Molly knows it’s her attitude that’s the problem, but after being shipped from one family to another, she’s had her fair share of adults treating her like an inconvenience. So when Molly’s forced to help an a wealthy elderly woman clean out her attic for community service, Molly is wary. But from the moment they meet, Molly realizes that Vivian isn’t like any of the adults she’s encountered before. Vivian asks Molly questions about her life and actually listens to the answers. Soon Molly sees they have more in common than she thought. Vivian was once an orphan, too—an Irish immigrant to New York City who was put on a so-called "orphan train" to the Midwest with hundreds of other children—and she can understand, better than anyone else, the emotional binds that have been making Molly’s life so hard. Together, they not only clear boxes of past mementos from Vivian’s attic, but forge a path of friendship, forgiveness, and new beginnings.
The Orphan Master's Son
Author: Adam Johnson
Publisher: Random House Incorporated
ISBN: 0812992792
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 465
Book Description
The son of a singer mother whose career forcibly separated her from her family and an influential father who runs an orphan work camp, Pak Jun Do rises to prominence using instinctive talents and eventually becomes a professional kidnapper and romantic rival to Kim Jong Il. By the author of Parasites Like Us.
Publisher: Random House Incorporated
ISBN: 0812992792
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 465
Book Description
The son of a singer mother whose career forcibly separated her from her family and an influential father who runs an orphan work camp, Pak Jun Do rises to prominence using instinctive talents and eventually becomes a professional kidnapper and romantic rival to Kim Jong Il. By the author of Parasites Like Us.
The Little Sparrows
Author: Al Lacy
Publisher: Multnomah
ISBN: 0307564673
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 363
Book Description
Kearney, Cheyenne, Rawlins. Reno, Sacramento, San Francisco. At each train station, a few lucky orphans from the crowded streets of New York City receive the fulfillment of their dreams: a home and family. This "orphan train" is the vision of Charles Loring Brace, founder of the Children's Aid Society, who cannot bear to see innocent children abandoned in the overpopulated cities of the mid-nineteenth-century. Yet it is not just the orphans whose lives need mending -- follow the train along and watch God's hand restore love and laughter to the right family at the right time!
Publisher: Multnomah
ISBN: 0307564673
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 363
Book Description
Kearney, Cheyenne, Rawlins. Reno, Sacramento, San Francisco. At each train station, a few lucky orphans from the crowded streets of New York City receive the fulfillment of their dreams: a home and family. This "orphan train" is the vision of Charles Loring Brace, founder of the Children's Aid Society, who cannot bear to see innocent children abandoned in the overpopulated cities of the mid-nineteenth-century. Yet it is not just the orphans whose lives need mending -- follow the train along and watch God's hand restore love and laughter to the right family at the right time!
Cultural Orphans in America
Author: Diana Loercher Pazicky
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1617030937
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 253
Book Description
Images of orphanhood have pervaded American fiction since the colonial period. Common in British literature, the orphan figure in American texts serves a unique cultural purpose, representing marginalized racial, ethnic, and religious groups that have been scapegoated by the dominant culture. Among these groups are the Native Americans, the African Americans, immigrants, and Catholics. In keeping with their ideological function, images of orphanhood occur within the context of family metaphors in which children represent those who belong to the family, or the dominant culture, and orphans represent those who are excluded from it. In short, the family as an institution provides the symbolic stage on which the drama of American identity formation is played out. Applying aspects of psychoanalytic theory that pertain to identity formation, specifically René Girard's theory of the scapegoat, Cultural Orphans in America examines the orphan trope in early American texts and the antebellum nineteenth-century American novel as a reaction to the social upheaval and internal tensions generated by three major episodes in American history: the Great Migration, the American Revolution, and the rise of the republic. In Puritan religious texts and Anne Bradstreet's poetry, orphan imagery expresses the doubt and uncertainty that shrouded the mission to the New World. During the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary periods, the separation of the colony from England inspired an identification with orphanhood in Thomas Paine's writings, and novels by Charles Brockden Brown and James Fenimore Cooper encode in orphan imagery the distinction between Native Americans and the new Americans who have usurped their position as children of the land. In women's sentimental fiction of the 1850s, images of orphanhood mirror class and ethnic conflict, and Uncle Tom's Cabin, like Frederick Douglass's autobiographies, employs orphan imagery to suggest the slave's orphanhood from the human as well as the national family.
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 1617030937
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 253
Book Description
Images of orphanhood have pervaded American fiction since the colonial period. Common in British literature, the orphan figure in American texts serves a unique cultural purpose, representing marginalized racial, ethnic, and religious groups that have been scapegoated by the dominant culture. Among these groups are the Native Americans, the African Americans, immigrants, and Catholics. In keeping with their ideological function, images of orphanhood occur within the context of family metaphors in which children represent those who belong to the family, or the dominant culture, and orphans represent those who are excluded from it. In short, the family as an institution provides the symbolic stage on which the drama of American identity formation is played out. Applying aspects of psychoanalytic theory that pertain to identity formation, specifically René Girard's theory of the scapegoat, Cultural Orphans in America examines the orphan trope in early American texts and the antebellum nineteenth-century American novel as a reaction to the social upheaval and internal tensions generated by three major episodes in American history: the Great Migration, the American Revolution, and the rise of the republic. In Puritan religious texts and Anne Bradstreet's poetry, orphan imagery expresses the doubt and uncertainty that shrouded the mission to the New World. During the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary periods, the separation of the colony from England inspired an identification with orphanhood in Thomas Paine's writings, and novels by Charles Brockden Brown and James Fenimore Cooper encode in orphan imagery the distinction between Native Americans and the new Americans who have usurped their position as children of the land. In women's sentimental fiction of the 1850s, images of orphanhood mirror class and ethnic conflict, and Uncle Tom's Cabin, like Frederick Douglass's autobiographies, employs orphan imagery to suggest the slave's orphanhood from the human as well as the national family.
Prodigal Son
Author: Gregg Hurwitz
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 1250252296
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 386
Book Description
Forced into retirement, Evan Smoak gets an urgent request for help from someone he didn't even suspect existed—in Prodigal Son, the next New York Times bestselling Orphan X book from Gregg Hurwitz. As a boy, Evan Smoak was pulled out of a foster home and trained in an off-the-books operation known as the Orphan Program. He was a government assassin, perhaps the best, known to a few insiders as Orphan X. He eventually broke with the Program and adopted a new name—The Nowhere Man—and a new mission, helping the most desperate in their times of trouble. But the highest power in the country has made him a tempting offer—in exchange for an unofficial pardon, he must stop his clandestine activities as The Nowhere Man. Now Evan has to do the one thing he’s least equipped to do—live a normal life. But then he gets a call for help from the one person he never expected. A woman claiming to have given him up for adoption, a woman he never knew—his mother. Her unlikely request: help Andrew Duran—a man whose life has gone off the rails, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, bringing him to the deadly attention of very powerful figures. Now a brutal brother & sister assassination team are after him and with no one to turn to, and no safe place to hide, Evan is Duran’s only option. But when the hidden cabal catches on to what Evan is doing, everything he’s fought for is on the line—including his own life.
Publisher: Minotaur Books
ISBN: 1250252296
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 386
Book Description
Forced into retirement, Evan Smoak gets an urgent request for help from someone he didn't even suspect existed—in Prodigal Son, the next New York Times bestselling Orphan X book from Gregg Hurwitz. As a boy, Evan Smoak was pulled out of a foster home and trained in an off-the-books operation known as the Orphan Program. He was a government assassin, perhaps the best, known to a few insiders as Orphan X. He eventually broke with the Program and adopted a new name—The Nowhere Man—and a new mission, helping the most desperate in their times of trouble. But the highest power in the country has made him a tempting offer—in exchange for an unofficial pardon, he must stop his clandestine activities as The Nowhere Man. Now Evan has to do the one thing he’s least equipped to do—live a normal life. But then he gets a call for help from the one person he never expected. A woman claiming to have given him up for adoption, a woman he never knew—his mother. Her unlikely request: help Andrew Duran—a man whose life has gone off the rails, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, bringing him to the deadly attention of very powerful figures. Now a brutal brother & sister assassination team are after him and with no one to turn to, and no safe place to hide, Evan is Duran’s only option. But when the hidden cabal catches on to what Evan is doing, everything he’s fought for is on the line—including his own life.
The Chaperone
Author: Laura Moriarty
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110158565X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
Soon to be a feature film from the creators of Downton Abbey starring Elizabeth McGovern, The Chaperone is a New York Times-bestselling novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in the 1920s 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 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. 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 isn’t what she anticipated, she is liberated in a way she could not have imagined. Over the course of Cora’s 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 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—Laura Moriarty’s 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.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 110158565X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 384
Book Description
Soon to be a feature film from the creators of Downton Abbey starring Elizabeth McGovern, The Chaperone is a New York Times-bestselling novel about the woman who chaperoned an irreverent Louise Brooks to New York City in the 1920s 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 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. 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 isn’t what she anticipated, she is liberated in a way she could not have imagined. Over the course of Cora’s 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 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—Laura Moriarty’s 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.