Becoming Chloe (review)

Chloe is actually Wanda when Jordy first meets her by chasing away her rapists; a street teen like Jordy, she latches onto him, rejecting her old name and liking his proffered alternative of "Chloe." Jordy finds himself attached to her as well, touched by her fierce loyalty and made protective by her strange fatalism and sad history ("Guys do that all the time," she says matter-of-factly about the rape), and the two eventually manage to find an apartment together. Jordy hopes the stability of their life there and Chloe's attendance at counseling will help her defeat the demons of her past, but it's soon clear that something more is necessary. When they lose the apartment at their landlord's death, Jordy takes Chloe on a cross-country trip to show her—at least he thinks it's for her—that the world is, after all, a beautiful place. Hard edges (including Jordy's assault on and possible killing of a man) balance with the story's gentle positivity to ensure that this is no syrupy fable of certain redemption; in fact, the tension mounts even as Jordy and Chloe encounter benevolence after benevolence, because Jordy becomes increasingly aware that a trip's worth of good things may not suffice to compensate for the life Chloe has led. Though Chloe, with her vacillation between childlike naïveté and bitterly earned wisdom, is a bit more of a symbol than a credible character, it's understandable that narrator Jordy would see her like that; his own characterization is rich and complex, with his putting his own sexuality (he's gay) on hold to prioritize his relationship with Chloe, and his unadmitted need for self-healing being fed through his caring for Chloe. The series of vignettes on their road trip, as they experience the kind of random encounters travel brings, is varied and believable, with individuals bringing the kind of quiet grace that ephemerality makes possible. Despite its darker elements, this is ultimately a tender testament to our capacity for affecting one another.