The Painted Girls: A Novel Paperback – February 4, 2014

"The Painted Girls," by Cathy Marie Buchanan, is an exquisite tale of three sisters: feisty Antoinette, tenderhearted, Marie, and the youngest, selfish, Charlotte. However, the book centers on the two oldest sisters Antoinette and Marie.It is 1878, almost the end of the Long Depression in 19th-century France. The sisters, suffering from inadequate nutrition and poor hygiene live in squalor with their widowed mother, a laundress, addicted to absinthe. Their mother has emotionally abandoned them. She squanders her meager earnings on the toxic, "green liqueur," leaving 16-year-old Antoinette to look after her sisters.Marie and Charlotte are solely dependent on Antoinette, who becomes their caretaker. Antoinette makes a living as a walk-on in a play presented by Emile Zola. Antoinette is the lioness, the sisters' protector. Through lies and petty theft, Antoinette displays the wherewithal to keep her sisters housed and fed.Prior to getting her role, Antoinette meets a dangerous, young man she falls in love with.The second oldest, 12-year-old, Marie, senses a personality flaw in the man that holds Antoinette's undivided attention. Later, the man's vile actions will cause division between the sisters and threaten their strong love, friendship and fragile subsistence.In the meantime, through the help of Antoinette, the Paris Opera selects Marie and Charlotte to train as ballerinas. Marie receives seven francs a month as a trainee.Marie comes to the attention of the famous painter, Edgar Degas, who enthralled by her waif-like physique, pays her six francs to pose for him. Degas later sculpts Marie, immortalizing her as his "Little Dancer Aged Fourteen."A wealthy older man, an abonne--season ticket holder at the Paris Opera, is also attracted to Marie. At that time, every destitute, young ballerina wants an abonne. These wealthy men appeared to have enormous control providing their teen mistresses preferential treatment with the Paris Opera House. Nevertheless, Marie is wary and fearful of the affluent man's attentions, and sensed there was more than his interest in the way she executed a plie or ronds de jambe a terre.Resilient Marie showed her independence by finding work at a bakery prior to her morning classes at the Ballet. The extra money also provided her private ballerina training. Yet, she knows she will need the assist of the abonne to make her dreams become a reality at the Paris Opera.I did not enjoy the novel until halfway through the book. After that, it was smooth sailing and a wonderful read. The ending about this family left me with a good feeling. No matter what your circumstances, love and unity is an important family tenet.The book provides some history of late 19th century Paris, France, ballerinas and the fate of unprotected women. Considered second-class citizens, if a woman had no husband and no skills such as seamstress or milliner, she was destined to be a laundress, maid or lady of the night.However, I found it interesting, citizens overlooked wealthy men's interest in young ballerinas at that time. Today, these men would be considered pedophiles. More interesting, but understood is the reasoning young ballerinas wanted an abonne. Sadly, they had a barely adequate standard of living. Even today, in some countries this is the norm where poor, young girls and boys, because of their circumstances, are exploited by wealthy tourists.Great summer read.

Thanks to Cathy Marie Buchanan, and her new novel The Painted Girls, the Belle Epoque in Paris is fully alive, as well as dark and dangerous. Over the years I have had the opportunity to view several exhibitions of paintings by Edgar Degas. His paintings of ballerinas are especially poignant and, while he painted dancers on stage performing, he also painted what most people never get to witness: tired dancers resting on a bench, bored dancers scratching their shoulders, nervous dancers putting on practice shoes. Degas went into the dance studios and hired young dancers to come and pose for him in his studio. Cathy Marie Buchanan's book takes us even deeper into their lives.The story is a fictionalized account of the Van Goetham sisters: Antoinette, Marie, and Charlotte. After the death of their father the three sisters struggle to survive in the slums of Paris with their absinthe-addicted mother. If you are looking for a pretty fairy-tale about ballerinas and actresses and lives of glamour and glory, you are in for a surprise because the lives of young, poor Parisian girls of this period were anything but glamorous. Antoinette, the eldest sister, is fortunate to have a part in a new play by Emile Zola, but she also works in the same laundry as her mother to pay the bills. Marie and Charlotte have been accepted into the dance school of the Paris Opera but Marie rises early to knead bread in a bakery before going to class and takes jobs modeling to help the three sisters and their mother keep a roof over their heads. Life is far from pretty.Antoinette falls madly in love with an alluring but brutish boy of the streets and we soon see her headed down a path that will lead to no good. She loves him deeply but he has little future. He spends his time in taverns drinking with worthless companions while she labors in the laundries. Marie, on the other hand, knows she has talent but in order to improve her dance skills she needs private lessons. She pays for these by posing for Edgar Degas and is, ultimately, the model for his poignant statue, Little Dancer Fourteen Years Old.The story is both beautiful and harsh. The only way for young dancers, who are not from privileged backgrounds, to survive is to acquire a "protector" - an older, well-to-do man who will buy their slippers and feed them well in exchange for their affection. Life for young women and girls in Paris is full of peril and can go in a very wrong direction, very quickly.Buchanan's Paris is rich and sensuous but also dark and perilous. Her writing is much like a painting by Degas, beautiful and graceful but depicting harsh realities that all the beauty cannot disguise. It is also the story of three sisters driven by the things sisters are always driven by - jealousy and competitiveness but also deep, deep love.I loved this book. I loved the honesty of the writing and the complexity of the sisters and the people in their lives. It is not a book for someone wanting a pretty fable, it is a powerful story about people you can understand and sympathize with. This is the dark side of Belle Epoque Paris but, as every artist knows, it is the shadows behind figures in a painting that make them come alive.

Three sisters and their widowed mother live in poverty. The mother is hooked on absinthe and is lucky to bring home the pay she earns as a washer woman. Antoinette, the eldest daughter works for the ballet at the opera. She gets the lowest wages as an extra when needed. She trains her sisters in the steps and lessons she has had and one day takes them to see if they can get hired on. She thinks the youngest sister, Charlotte has the most talent but surprisingly it's Marie at 13 who turns heads.This is life in Paris in the 1800's in the not so glamorous parts. These are people scraping for every penny and doing what must be done to survive. I was really engrossed in these lives until about 3/4 of the way through and then it lagged a bit for me but it was a good read. I liked the characters and it brought the seedier parts of Paris to life for me.

...do que sobre o crime que envolveu as meninas Van Goethem. Uma delas, Maria foi a modelo de alguns quadros e da escultura “Pequena bailarina de cartorze anos”.Além disso, acho que o livro seria mais interessante se tivesse trabalhado mais a “democratização” da mulher que tanto atraia o artista. Talvez histórias mais tensas (e não apenas breves descrições) para denunciar os magnatas que frequentavam as casas de shows (incluindo os próprios pais) e utilizavam as bailarinas como objetos.Gostei da presença de Émile Zola (ainda que en passant) com a encenação de L’assommoir que retrata o alcoolismo e a pobreza, temas presentes no livro.

Ein exzellentes Buch. Super geschrieben, spannend und sehr interessant, ich konnte teilweise kaum aufhören zu lesen! Klare Empfehlung

I enjoyed this book. It gave a realistic portrayal of life for the lower classes in France, particularly in Paris, at that period of history. I didn't care for the focus on the different ballet moves and positions because I didn't understand them and found them distracting, but I suppose they were integral to the story. Each female character was sympathetic, but I'd have liked the characters of the mother and youngest daughter slightly more developed. I liked how all was resolved in the end. Overall, a well-written book and a good read.

A most disappointing book. The story is light weight, the treatment pedestrian, the language crude, misses to bring out the most beautiful period of 19th century alive, All in all waste of my time & money

I loved this novel, set in the Paris of Degas. It tells the story of three sisters, one of whom becomes the model for Degas' Little Dancer Aged Fourteen.At times it reads like Balzac but Buchanan gets inside the heads of these three girls and creates an inner monologue that is convincing and often moving.This is a sordid tales of poverty, desperation, prostitution and exploitation as three young dancers struggle for fame and recognition.Although it has strong biographical elements ist is essentially fiction and powerful fiction at that. Buy it!