I love that The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan is my first book blog of 2013.  I absolutely loved this story and cannot wait to get it into your hands.  While The Painted Girls is a novel, it is based on the true story of the three Van Goethem sisters’ lives.  Marie and Charlotte were both ballet dancers in the Paris Opera dance school. Antoinette, the oldest, works as an extra, having been dismissed from the dance school.

The dance school at the Paris Opera was a place where young girls had a chance to be lifted out of poverty.  The young girls would work their way up through the ranks and if they were “lucky”, catch the eye of an abonee, a rich older man.  These alliances were very common place, and the girls were very hopeful that an abonee would come along and to pay their rent and give them gifts.  It was survival.

We follow the stories of the sisters  in The Painted Girls as they try to survive and keep their family together.  Their father has recently passed away and their mother, who works as a laundress, seems to be found in the bottom of an absinthe bottle more often than not.  Antoinette is desperately looking for love, Marie for security, and Charlotte for success. We follow all three girls on very bumpy but interesting road.  Along the way, Marie is noticed by the artist, Edgar Degas, who frequents the Paris Opera looking for girls to model for him.  She is very excited to be able to earn extra money, and even more so when she finds out about the sculpture he is creating.  Marie is the model for Little Dancer, 14 Years.

I do not want to give to many of the details away but I will say that I really loved this book.  I feel like the author did a fantastic job in describing Paris during this time and the struggles people faced just to survive everyday living, especially young girls.  This quote seems to sum it all up:

No social being is less protected than the young Parisian girl–by laws, regulations, and social customs.

–Le Figaro, 1880

To see other works of art by Degas referenced in The Painted Girls please click here.

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