The Painted Girls by Cathy Marie Buchanan

from goodreads

2.5 stars

It is such a beautiful day. The sky is blue and cloudless and when I look out my front window the orangy yellow of the leaves against the blue is brilliantly breathtaking. Across the street there is a beautiful maple tree whose leaves are the brightest orange. I love how it looks in the sunlight, almost like a the tree is on fire.

I love the cool mornings. I love the pumpkin scented candles that are out now. I love eating pumpkin bread. I just love autumn and all that comes with it. Hopefully we will have another week or so of this gorgeous weather. I could handle it.

Synopsis

Antionette and Marie van Goethem are sisters who are living in poverty in France in the 1800s. While Marie and Charlotte, their younger sister, are sent to the ballet, Antionette becomes an extra on the stage and eventually a laundress. This book follows their struggles of survival, as well as, their struggles for bettering their situation. Are they doomed to be stuck in the squalor they were born in or are they able to rise above it and make something of themselves?

My Thoughts

The book started out really well. It was very interesting and excited to see what was going to happen. About half way through it got a bit tedious and by the end I felt quite indifferent to it and the characters.

I liked learning about the ballet system in Paris. It was interesting to see how those in poverty saw it as their ticket out of their current conditions and would do anything to be successful. The whole abonne system, was quite interesting as well. Rich, married men, carrying on with and sponsoring rising ballet stars. Creepy.

For me I found the book repetitive. Marie, felt she was ugly, and went on and on and on and on about it. I guess, as a teenage girl trying to do her best in a system that truly valued a certain look for ballet, and who was surrounded by other girls all day, it would be something that would be on her mind a lot. But, I just didn't care. The whining about her looks didn't make me feel sympathetic, it just made me want to read through faster to be done.

As for Antoinette, I didn't really like her at the beginning of the book. I liked her a bit more at the end. It was frustrating how blind she was when it came to her love interest. I guess we can all get like that at sometimes but I just found it ridiculous.

I found the ending rather abrupt. You sort of know how their lives ended up, but it left it rather open. It would have been nice to see how they got from the lowest point to where they were at the end. I think that would have been interesting. I also found the last bit a bit confusing. The point of view changed every other page and I wasn't sure what exactly was going on. Was Marie's downward spiral happening in just an afternoon or was this over a course of sometime?

It also would have been nice to explore what happened between Marie and Degas a bit more. I think that might have been interesting.

With historical fiction it's hard because you don't want to be too out there with what you think these real live people said and did. You don't want to insinuate anything that will make historians be up in arms. But at the same time, you do have some license in stretching the truth or showing what might have been. I think I would have liked it if that book took more of that license.

One theme that Buchanan brings out which I think was very interesting was the idea of being able to change ourselves and behaviour. At the time Emile Zola was out with his book and play that stated that certain facial features meant you would be a bad person and if you had these bad facial features you were born just to do bad things and there nothing you could do about it. No matter what good you tried to do eventually you would change end up bad. It was in your nature. While we know facial features don't mean you are good or bad, yet, it can still affect ourselves and those around us. And this whole nature vs. change for the better idea gave some great food for thought.

While others really loved this book it didn't do anything for me. I guess I am glad I read it, but I would have been fine not reading it too. It just was too blah to me. There were some special moments, but they were few and far between.