The Painted Girls
Author(s): Cathy Marie Buchanan
Paris, 1878. Following her father’s sudden death, Marie van Goethem is dispatched to the Paris Opéra, where for a scant wage she is trained to enter the famous Ballet. Her older sister, Antoinette, finds work—and the love of a dangerous young man—as an extra on the stage. Marie is soon modeling in the studio of renowned artist Edgar Degas, who will immortalize her image forever, while Antoinette must make the choice between a life of honest labor and the more profitable avenues open to a willing young woman—that is, unless her perilous love derails her completely.
Set at a moment of profound artistic, cultural, and societal change, The Painted Girls is a tale of two remarkable sisters rendered uniquely vulnerable to the darker impulses of civilized society.
Praise for THE PAINTED GIRLS
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Review(s):
Sketched in rich detail and teeming with suspense. The Painted Girls is hard to put down.
Buchanan weaves real and fictional characters and their stories to create a rich stew of drunkards, deceivers and ne’er-do-wells, seasoned by the occasional soft-hearted soul, who change the lives of the sisters.
The reader is completely absorbed in the struggle of Marie to rise above her circumstances. . . . [A] convincing, heartfelt story.
History, coming of age and the art of Degas’s beloved dancers are woven together in this enchanting novel. Utterly captivating.
You will be swept away by The Painted Girls. Wonderfully imagined and masterfully rendered . . . [it] will change the way you see the world of ballet, art and the lives it portrays.
“Buchanan paints the girls who spring from the page as vibrantly as a dancer’s leap across a stage. . . . A captivating story of fate, tarnished ambition and the ultimate triumph of sister-love.”
“Based on historical figures and incidents, this novel of family, romance, degradation, and fulfillment delivers great atmosphere and fully-realized characters.”
“Richly imagined. . . . Amid the glamour of tutus and art emerges a surprisingly gritty story of survival in the gutters of Belle Époque Paris.”
“Belle époque Paris springs to life under the sure hand of Cathy Marie Buchanan. . . . In this book I found a lovely braiding of the real and invented, a seductive world I did not want to leave.”
“Buchanan achieves all that historical fiction asks for in The Painted Girls.”
OLA Evergreen Award
ISBN: 9781443450423