Images of belle epoque Paris are burned in our minds from the works of its renowned painters. Cathy Marie Buchanan's The Painted Girls explores the internal world beyond the canvas, from the point of view of the teenage student dancer who modeled for Edgar Degas's sculpture The Little Dancer, Age Fourteen. Loosely inspired by the true story of the impoverished van Goethem sisters of Montmartre, Buchanan's story follows Marie, a struggling ballet dancer, and her warm-hearted older sister, Antoinette, as they battle what seems an inevitable fate of destitution and despair.
When their father dies, leaving only their depressed and alcoholic mother to care for them, threatened with impending eviction and starvation, the van Goethem sisters face the challenge of simple survival. It is with the hope of earning enough money for food and shelter that Marie enrolls in dancing school, becoming one of the "petit rats"--desperate girls working to learn the discipline of ballet in the hope of a stage career and a better life for their families. Every girl cherishes the dream of outshining the others, and attracting the patronage of the abonnés--wealthy men with a particular interest in dancers. First, though, Marie attracts the attention of Degas, who asks her to model for him in a partnership that will eventually lead to a sculpture that, in its bronze reproductions, has been exhibited all over the world.
From the daily routines at the barre to the obstacles of a dancer's life, Buchanan describes the world of 19th-century Parisian ballet in meticulous detail. The immediate threat of poverty is also vivid, giving readers a constant awareness that Marie and her family are on the verge of being cast out in the streets. Rather than romanticizing ballet, The Painted Girls underscores the grim need that fuels the dancers, raw emotion that found its way into the works of Degas in violent slashes of pastel.
What may be most remarkable in the novel, however, are the relationships between women. In most novels about competition between women, the characters end up bitterly at odds; yet here the most devoted friendships are between the female characters--Marie and her schoolmate Blanche; Antoinette and the beautiful prostitute Colette. And the heart of the novel is the love between the two sisters, which forms the bedrock of their lives--and will become, in a convergence of tragic events, what is ultimately most at stake. --Ilana Teitelbaum
Shelf Talker: Buchanan (The Day the Falls Stood Still) turns to belle epoque Paris and the 14-year-old ballet dancer who modeled for a famous sculpture by Edgar Degas.