The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan

The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan
Published January 2013 by Penguin Group
Source: I bought this one to read with the Omaha Bookworms for discussion with the author

Publisher's Summary:
1878 Paris. Following their father’s sudden death, the van Goethem sisters find their lives upended. Without his wages, and with the small amount their laundress mother earns disappearing into the absinthe bottle, eviction from their lodgings seems imminent. With few options for work, Marie is dispatched to the Paris Opéra, where for a scant seventeen francs a week, she will be trained to enter the famous ballet. Her older sister, Antoinette, finds work as an extra in a stage adaptation of Émile Zola’s naturalist masterpiece L’Assommoir.

Dancer At Rest by Edgar Degas*

Marie throws herself into dance and is soon modeling in the studio of Edgar Degas, where her image will forever be immortalized as Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. There she meets a wealthy male patron of the ballet, but might the assistance he offers come with strings attached? Meanwhile Antoinette, derailed by her love for the dangerous Émile Abadie, must choose between honest labor and the more profitable avenues open to a young woman of the Parisian demimonde.

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

My Thoughts:


As she did with The Day The Falls Stood Still, Buchanan took her inspiration (in this case, from a BBC documentary about Degas' famous sculpture Little Dancer Aged Fourteen Years) and delved into the background of an obscure figure in history, blending historical fact with very believable fiction.

The novel develops around Marie and Antoinette, building a their story around other historical facts and figures. Buchanan is masterful at weaving her story around history without playing fast and loose with the facts. Here she has merged what is known about the van Goethem sisters, Degas, and a man named Emile Abadie into a work of fiction. Clearly Buchanan has done her research but the book never feels as though she is working to teach the reader every thing she learned..

Emile Abadie (left) as painted by Edgar Degas

While Marie struggles with the realities of making a living in the world of ballet, it is Antoinette who finds herself in deeper and deeper trouble as her relationship with Abadie becomes all consuming. Buchanan ties the stories of the sisters, Abadie, and Degas together using the then popular study of physiognomy (the supposed art of using facial features to determine a person's character) to explore deeper moral questions. Is Marie bound to end badly because of her bone structure? Or does poverty play a bigger role in determining what lengths a person may go to? Is there ever any justification for "immoral" behavior?

At it's heart, though, The Painted Girls is the story of family, of the bond between sisters. You can't help but grow to care about the characters in this book, even some who may not deserve your concern, and that is where Buchanan truly shines.

Little Dancer Aged Fourteen Years by Edgar Degas*

*Marie van Goethem was the model for both of these works.

Top Ten Tuesday

This week on Top Ten Tuesday, the ladies at The Broke and The Bookish have asked us to list our "Top Ten Authors That I'd Put On My Auto-Buy List" (basically an auto-buy list is no questions asked..you love this author so much that no matter what they wrote next you'd buy regardless of genre or subject matter). Ah, now THIS one is definitely an easy one for me!

Assuming these cannot be authors who've come back from the dead (because that would change things up for me quite a lot), my top ten auto-buy authors are:

Thrity Umrigar

1. Thrity Umrigar - In 2010, two of my top ten books were written by Umrigar (The Weight of Heaven and The Space Between Us). In 2012, The World We Found found it's way to my top ten. Is the woman even capable of writing a less than extremely interesting book?

2. Peter Geye - Safe From The Sea was by far and away my favorite book of 2011 and is a book I always recommend to both men and women. Geye followed that up with The Lighthouse Road which was also incredible. Two for two? Can't wait to see what he's working on now.

3. Ann Patchett - even when Patchett writes a book I don't absolutely love, I know it will still be a book that will challenge me and make me think (State of Wonder). And there is always that hope that one day she will give me another book I love as much as Bel Canto, one of my top five all-time favorite books.

4. Ami McKay - Like Geye, I've read two books by McKay (The Birth House and The Virgin Cure) and both have been incredible blends of historical fact and fiction. The Birth House is a book I always recommend to book clubs.

Alexandra Fuller

5. Alexandra Fuller - I'm sure that one day Fuller will run out of amazing memories of growing up in Africa, but so far she hasn't. Besides, she writes so beautifully, I'm sure that whatever she writes about will be well worth reading.

6. E. L. Doctorow - Even when he's pretentious, his writing is amazing. Ragtime remains one of my all-time favorite books 25 years after I first read it.

7. Jess Walter - Yep, another writer who's two for two for me. I quite enjoyed The Financial Lives of the Poets and was even more impressed by last year's Beautiful Ruins.

8. Ron Rash - First Serena and then The Cove - Rash impressed me as much for his ability to write memorable female characters as for his portrayal of life in the Appalachians.


9. Cathy Marie Buchanan - The woman is simply incredible at blending historical fact and fiction. Both The Day The Falls Stood Still and The Painted Girls are wonderful books that make excellent book club choices.

10 Jennie Nash - If you weren't wondering what took me so long to get to Nash, you haven't been reading this blog for very long. Nash creates characters that speak to me, who say things I can imagine myself saying. I'm always impressed, too, by the amazing amount of research she does.

Now if, by some miracle Charlotte Bronte, Edith Wharton and Jane Austen were to come back to life and start writing again, they would have to be added to the list.

What authors do you automatically buy every time they write a book?

Midnight In Peking by Paul French

Midnight In Peking by Paul French
Published April 2012 by Penguin Group
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher in exchange for this review

Publisher's Summary:
Chronicling an incredible unsolved murder, Midnight in Peking captures the aftermath of the brutal killing of a British schoolgirl in January 1937. The mutilated body of Pamela Werner was found at the base of the Fox Tower, which, according to local superstition, is home to the maliciously seductive fox spirits. As British detective Dennis and Chinese detective Han investigate, the mystery only deepens and, in a city on the verge of invasion, rumor and superstition run rampant. Based on seven years of research by historian and China expert Paul French, this true-crime thriller presents readers with a rare and unique portrait of the last days of colonial Peking.

My Thoughts:
So much to learn in the book about a part of world history I knew absolutely nothing about beyond knowing that Japan had invaded China just prior to World War II. This book is as much about a time and place as it is about the murder of Pamela Werner. French does an admirable job of explaining how China's political turmoil set it up for not only the invasion by the Japanese but also the rise of communism. Through all of this, much of the international community, which almost exclusively lived in the walled Legation Quarter, went about life as if nothing had changed.

Pamela Werner's murder was never officially solved for a number of reasons: corruption, corruption and sloppy police work being among them. The principal reason seems to have been the refusal of the British diplomatic corp and British government to do anything that might put Britain in a bad light or ruffle the feathers of the Chinese government. To say that the people responsible for Pamela's death were beasts is not an understatement (it truly is one of the most awful crimes I have ever heard about), but the British come off looking almost as evil.

I did find myself scrambling to try to keep track of all of the historical background and there are a lot of names to keep track of as well. I can't imagine trying to listen to this book on audio. The book, although not long, did lag a bit for me in the middle but picked up steam again toward the end. French did a great job of bringing closure to the key players lives without dragging things out too long. He has also included a number of photos in the book which I appreciate when reading non-fiction. The publisher calls this book "riveting." I'm not sure I would agree, but it is definitely a solid read about an horrific crime and a unique time and place. 

Sunday Salon - February 24

Can you believe this is the last Sunday in February? I find myself wondering if this winter has flown by because I'm getting older or because I've refused to let it get me down as it so often does. People, we are only a few weeks from spring!

Here's What I'm:

Listening To: Not The Enchantress of Florence. Seriously, I've reached the point with this one where I'm not turning it on at all some days. So much going back and forth in time, so many characters - I'm not sure I really even know what's going on any more!

Watching: The Nebraska state swim championships this weekend. I don't have kids swimming at the high school any more but I still like to cheer for the team and I do love to watch swim meets.

Johnny Lee Miller as Sherlock Holmes

Also, Elementary which I love and which has not disappointed me unlike a certain British program which killed off a second major character last week. I'm looking at you, Downtown Abbey! I swear I watch Elementary because it's a great show and not just to look at Johnny Lee Miller...although it's definitely one of the reasons!

Reading: Half The Sky  - this one is a tough read but also so uplifting. I'm counting my blessings with every story.

Found this week:
On Flavorwire this week I found a great link to bookish buildings. Hmm, wondering if I could get The Big Guy to repaint the house? Probably wouldn't get it by the neighborhood association, I suppose?

Making: White chili, steel cut oats, crock pot pork chops with mashed potatoes, and meatloaf. It's been a productive week in my kitchen...for a change!

Planning: A major reorganization of my books, starting with a purge. This is going to be tough.

Grateful for: Road crews who worked through the night to make sure that the 8" of snow that fell Thursday was largely off the roads by Friday morning. Now we are just left with a lovely blanket of snow on our lawns.

Loving: that my husband and his three siblings got to spend last weekend together - the first time they've all been together in two years.

Thinking: Three plus hour happy hours spent with great friends are just the way to end the week.

Looking forward to: Miss H's 18th birthday this week! Eighteen years since pink clothes, those beautiful brown eyes, and all of that sass came into our lives. We are so proud of the person she's become!

Fairy Tale Fridays - Into The Woods

Y'all know I'm a big fan of musicals (not sure where I picked up the Southern twang, sorry) so it seems only fitting that I should feature the fairy tale musical on Fairy Tale Fridays. The problem is that I have never seen Stephen Sondheim's Into The Woods. I know it's come to Omaha many times in the past 17 years but, I'll be honest, it really hasn't interested me much. I didn't know the the music and all I really knew about it was that the Broadway show starred Bernadette Peters. Whose voice I really don't care for. Yeah, I know, it seems kind of silly to disregard all stagings of a musical because of that but there you have it.

Recently however, thanks to Pandora, I've become acquainted with the music. While it won't crack into my top ten of musicals for the music, it is still Sondheim and definitely worth a listen. Which, in turn, got me more interested in the story.

James Lapine's book weaves together several fairy tales into a new story. Into The Woods combines the stories of "Jack and the Beanstalk," "Cinderella," "Little Red Riding Hood," and "Rapunzel." Even the more original piece of the story, that of a baker and his wife, draws heavily from the world of fairy tales, evoking the story of the Gingerbread boy. Just to make things even more interesting, Lapine throws in a witch.

Original Broadway cast of Into The Woods

That's a lot of characters and there is a lot going on in this book, with all of the characters interacting with each other. There's so much going on in this musical, I'm quite sure that if it ever does come to Omaha again, I won't be taking The Big Guy to a matinee. Because he naps at matinees. I don't want to spend the entire second act explaining to him that even though it seemed like everyone was going to live happily ever after at the end of Act I, things aren't quite as rosy as they seem. Which, as it happens, if pretty much how life works, isn't it?

Have you seen this musical? What did you think of the story? The music?