G14 Book Review of The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan
Name of Book: The Painted Girls Author: Cathy Marie Buchanan ISBN: 978-1-59448-624-1 Publisher: Riverhead books Type of book: Ballet, Paris, poverty, sisterhood, 1878-1881, 1895, based on true people, statue, looking at self, France, Degas, relationships, working Year it was published: 2013 Summary : Its 1878. After their father's sudden death, the van Goethem sisters find their lives upended. Left at the edge of destitution, Marie is dispatched to the Paris Opera, where for a scant seventeen francs a week she will be trained to enter the famous Ballet. Her older sister, Antoinette, finds work in a stage adaption of Emile Zola's naturalist masterpiece L'Assomoir. Soon, Marie is modeling in the studio of Edgar Degas, where her image will be immortalized in the statue Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. Antoinette, derailed by her love for a dangerous man, must choose between honest labor and the more profitable avenues open to a young woman of the Parisian demi...