The Painted Girls

A Novel

By: Cathy Marie Buchanan

Narrated by: Cassandra Campbell, Julia Whelan, Danny Cambell

Length: 12 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

Paris, 1878: Following the death of their father from overwork, the three van Goethem sisters find their lives upended. Without their father’s wages, and with what little their mother earns as a laundress disappearing down the absinthe bottle, eviction from their single boarding room seems imminent. With few options for work available for a girl, bookish 14-year-old Marie and her younger sister Charlotte are dispatched to the Paris Opera, where for a scant seven francs a week, the girls will be trained to enter its famous ballet. Their older sister, stubborn and insolent 17-year-old Antoinette, dismissed from the ballet, finds herself launched into the orbit of Émile Zola and the influence of his notorious naturalist masterpiece L’Assommoir - and into the arms of a young man who may turn out to be a murderer.

Marie throws herself into dance, hoping her natural gift and hard work will enable her to escape her circumstances, but the competition to become one of the famous étoiles at whose feet flowers are thrown nightly is fierce, and Marie is forced to turn elsewhere to make money. Cripplingly self-conscious about her low-class appearance, she nonetheless finds herself modeling in the studio of Edgar Degas, where her image will forever be immortalized in his controversial sculpture Little Dancer, Aged 14. Antoinette, meanwhile, descends lower and lower in society and must make the choice between honest labor as a laundress and the more profitable avenues available to a young woman in the Paris demimonde - that is unless her love for the dangerous Émile Abadie derails her completely.

Set at a moment of profound artistic, cultural, and societal change, The Painted Girls is ultimately a tale of two remarkable girls rendered uniquely vulnerable to the darker impulses of "civilized society". In the end, each will come to realize that her individual salvation, if not survival, lies with the other.

©2013 Cathy Marie Buchanan (P)2013 Blackstone Audio, Inc

Critic reviews

“ The Painted Girls is historical fiction at its finest, awash in period details of the Paris of Degas and Zola while remaining, at its heart, the poignant story of two sisters struggling to stay together even as they find themselves pulled toward different, and often misunderstood, dreams. Cathy Marie Buchanan also explores the uneasy relationship between artist and muse with both compassion and soul-searing honesty.” (Melanie Benjamin, author of Alice I Have Been)

“Sisters, dance, art, ambition, and intrigue in late 1800s Paris. The Painted Girls offers the best of historical fiction: compelling characters brought backstage at l’Opera and front and center in Degas’ studio. This one has ‘book club favorite’ written all over it.” (Meg Waite Clayton, author of The Wednesday Sisters)

“Will hold you enthralled as it spools out the vivid story of young sisters in late nineteenth century Paris struggling to transcend their lives of poverty through the magic of dance. I guarantee, you will never look at Edgar Degas’s immortal sculpture of the Little Dancer in quite the same way again.” (Kate Alcott, author of The Dressmaker)

Casandra Campbell

Detest Campbell’s rhythm of speech—especially around consonants. True over many books.
Loved Julia Whelan immensely however.

Sad Lives

What a horrible time in history for women. Painful to read this historical fiction about the lives of the dancers and opera performers during the time Degas was painting them. This author easily transported me into the lives of three sisters struggling to succeed during the late1800's.

Intriguing look at history

Very captivating novel. It highlighted the strife for women and the poor. I could not quit listening.

Stellar Listen, even with semi-flawed read

what a well imagined and written story. you don't have to be a fan of Degas to enjoy the story "behind" his ballet paintings...thought, it's amazing how author wound a tale of sisterhood and misery and mistrust and love all based on images that Degas produced.

i was truly enthralled by each of the sister's stories (as they were told in alternate chapters), and of course the culminating final moments of their childhood stories were chilling and touching and exciting.

i'm assuming that the reader was supposed to have moments of falling deeply in love with the sisters, then feeling anger towards them, then sympathy, pity...running through the gamut of emotions for (and with) each of them. of course i had a "favorite" sister. whom i was rooting for and empathizing with and with whom i wanted to choose the right path for success.

i will confess, i did not like the way that Antoinette's narrator read her part. it took me a few chapters to separate myself from her reading of it...and just hear the words, not her reading. if it was solely narrated by her, I'm not sure i'd have gotten through it...and that would have been a real shame, as this is one of the best stories i've listened to in a while. Marie's narrator, however, was spot on.

i really truly loved this story. in itself it felt like a painted picture...which makes the writing a success.

Only a Pastel Version of the *Beautiful Era*

A beautiful carving is made at the expense of all that is thrown away...a thought that describes this story of the young *ballet rat* that poses for Edgar Degas's sculpture, (Little Dancer of Fourteen) her family, and the Belle Epoque period of France. Behind the beauty of the opera, ballet, and the arts, is the contrast of the discarded and impoverished, their hard and sad lives of struggling to make a living.

The Belle Epoque.."the beautiful era"...Van Gogh, Gaugin, Matisse, Toulouse-Lautrec, Picasso, the birth of Impressionism, the Ballet Russes, Baudelaire, Debussy, Ravel...a primordial soup of creativity in an amazing time. But Painted Girls views only the underbelly of Paris, through the eyes of 3 sisters struggling to pay rent and buy bread--the artists to them are men or patrons who will pay money for *services.* With such a vibrant and creative climate, the author never uses the full palette available, and paints only a watery view of Paris at its artistic height. It ends up being a story that could be told in almost any era.

I thought the first half of the book slow and almost juvenile, told through the younger girl's point of view; then the older sister starts to narrate, and the book quickly goes blue. Definitely not a YA novel! The debauchery the girls have to put up with just to make a living is sad to listen to, and even worse, their acceptance of that fact of life. The focus shifts to the older sister's infatuation with a young man--with all the charm of Bill Sikes--accused of murder. Degas makes just a brief appearance (his sculpture of the girl obviously gained its appreciation after his death), and while a few ballets of the times are mentioned, the listener hears more about the barre work than the lavish productions or famous dancers.

To the patient listener, there is a story, and even some historical bits, but it was much less than what I had anticipated (the 3* overall should probably be 2*)--even with the author's research, and so very slow. The narrator does a good job with the pronunciation of French names, as well as with the different female characters; her attempt at the male voices could have been spared by using Danny Campbell for all of the male parts instead of just the interludes...miniscule issue.

The Painted Girls

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

I would not recommend this book. It failed to hold my interest and I couldn't wait for the
end to come.

If this book were a movie would you go see it?

No

DREARY AND DEPRESSING

There are some things about this novel about poor sisters living in the slums of Paris in the late 1800s that I really liked. For example, the author paints a vivid picture of the place and time so we can almost feel what Marie and Antoinette are going through. When Marie works so hard to pass her ballet exam to move up to the cadre, the reader can feel the poor girl's fatigue. Basically, I liked the story (up to a point) and got caught up in their dramatic situations -- how they both had to work so hard for so little; how they had to deal with their father's death and their mother's alcoholism; how Antoinette is so in love with the loser Emile that you want to just shake her; and how Marie succumbs to her patron, Mr. Lefevre, which nearly ruins her life and almost destroys her future.

The author's senses of verisimilitude of the time and place feels spot-on.

But, there is no joy in this book and, most importantly, very little hope for these characters. It is dreary, depressing and dramatic. It is also somewhat repetitious, as you see similar scenes play out at different times again and again. If the book were shorter, the dreariness wouldn't feel quite so overwhelming. But, it is long and all-encompassing and soon becomes oppressive.

The book is nicely written; the author's use of language is superb. And, she creates an environment that is realistic and characters that you feel for. But, eventually, it was too oppressive an experience. I wanted to like this more than I did...but I just didn't.

The narration was superb, though. I really loved the voices of the two sisters; they were distinct and yet had similar tones.

Slow start but stick with.

I thought this was a slow starter. To the point were I had to push myself to listen to one more chapter or I would move on to a new story. I am quite glad I stayed with it. I can't even say what I liked about this story .... I just liked it more and more as the story went on. Maybe it's that I have three daughters and can appreciate the different personalities that create a synergy that is difficult to explain but is clearly felt .

Touching, Informative

A time period of which I knew very little, this tale of two Paris sisters in the 1870s was informative & touching. Antoinette & Marie's ever-present poverty mixed with opportunities for dance, work & love pull at your heart while the details & truths from historical murderers & their trials, Zola's popular naturalism theory (thieves & murderers are born, not made) and even the famous Degas' dancing girl paintings & statues generate disbelief of history's harsh realities. Read aloud by three talented artists, this well-researched & cleverly-connected story was an addictive listen and now I want to study more closely Degas' art and delve into the reform movements of the late 19th century.

Took a while to get hooked, but landed a whopper.

Did not grab my attention initially but once it did I loved it. Great character development in a historical setting with literary liberties