The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan
Behind the Ballet
The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan brings the model of
Degas’s statuette, Little Dancer Aged
Fourteen, to life. In this novel, Cathy Marie Buchannan takes us into the
gritty world of three impoverished sisters in the unglamorous side of the Belle
Époque. We see the foul Parisian streets where hunger, crime, ambition,
degradation, and disappointment combine into a desperate amalgam. The story alternates between narrations of
the middle and older Van Goethem sisters. Marie is an aspiring ballet student
at the Opéra. Antoinette was an actress who finds escape in love. But in this
case love can be as harsh and chafing as the hands of a washerwoman—one of the
jobs she has taken on to support her sisters and her useless, absinthe-soaked
mother.
Still the money is never enough and they are always
hungry. Marie takes work in a bakery
before her dance lessons. She also earns
money as a model for Edgar Degas, and is later immortalized in his statuette, Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. The original wax and later bronze-cast
sculptures present a street urchin dancer described by a critic of the time as
being “imprinted with the promise of every vice.” Was that a prediction of a grim
lifestyle to come? You’ll have to read and find out.
I found this book fascinating! Buchanan has a skill for
luring the reader on and on, deeper into the lives of the Van Goethem sisters. I
also have a whole new understanding and respect for Degas’s ballerinas. When I look at the images of his paintings
now, I not only see the grace and beauty, but I can almost feel the
determination, exhaustion, hardships, and twists of fate that brought the girls
on stage.
I hope to have the privilege of seeing some of Degas’s
paintings and the statuette of Marie Van Goethem in person. And, while this novel is a fictionalization
of her life, when I see the statuette, I will feel like I know this once
anonymous dancer.
A great read.
If you like this book, you may also enjoy I Am Madame X by Gioia Diliberto, Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland, and Frida by Barbara Mujica.
If you like this book, you may also enjoy I Am Madame X by Gioia Diliberto, Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland, and Frida by Barbara Mujica.
Happy Reading,
Annette
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