Not Enough Time

I just got home a little while ago from a book club meeting at the D.C. public library. I love talking about books. I feel most at ease talking in font of a group when I'm talking about a book. For this meeting, I read The Chaperone by Laura Moriarty. 

The story is about two women: Cora and Louise. Cora is a 36-year-old woman bound by social constraints as much as her restrictive, welt-producing corset. She married at 17 and has been living a secretive, passionless life. She jumps at the chance to chaperone the 15-year-old Louise for a summer dance program in NYC because she grew up as an orphan there until she was sent to Kansas on an orphan train. Louise is strikingly beautiful, worldly and womanly—worrisomely so for her age, in fact. Louise is try to break all the social rules while Cora tries to reign her and look for her birth parents. Of course, she finds someone who kindles the passion in her. 

I found the settings and time period (the 1920's) as interesting as the characters. I love imagining New York as it was then. It's funny that 100 years ago tourists did many of the same things, like going to the top of a skyscraper (then just 60 stories high), taking a tour of Central Park, and seeing a Broadway show. It made me miss NY, a bit.

I like this snippet from the book. To give some context, Cora is speaking with a man who she just told her life story to. He suggests that she get a divorce.

"What would I tell people? What would I tell my sons?"

"That you want to be happy."

"That’s not enough."

"No?" He leaned closer, just a little. She drew back, looking away. The Italian woman had gone out in front of the store to sweep.

"What a waste," he said.

She looked up. They stared at each other unblinking, with just the sound of the fan and the distant scuffing of the Italian woman’s broom. 

Later in the book Cora realizes that she "lived too much of her life so stupidly, following nonsensical rules, as if she and her, as if anyone, had all the time in the world." Don't most of us do this? I remember looking up after I read this line and thinking, "There's no time, no time at all to live an unfulfilled life.