The Painted Girls, Cathy Marie Buchanan

The Painted Girls

By Cathy Marie Buchanan

 

(Tansley Reads Rating: 59%)

Ice Breaker

What have your experiences been with the ballet?

 

Questions

1. Do you think this book was appropriately titled?

2. There are four women in this family but only two of them are given voices.  Why not all of them and why Marie and Antoinette?

3. Why do you think the author starts the story with Marie?

4. Antoinette likes to appear to be unrefined (pg 34 not using proper language but could) and seems not to care that she failed at the ballet, at the same time, she is very ambitious for her sisters.  Why do you think she behaves this way?

5. “No social being is less protected than the young Parisian girl – by laws, regulations and social customs.” – Le Figaro 1880. Why did Buchanan choose this quotation as the books epigraph? How does it relate to the story? In what ways are the Van Goethem sisters unprotected?

6. What did you think of the way the Ballet School worked?  Were you surprised by anything?

7. What was Degas trying to say with, or what did he see in, the subjects he chose for his art? (He frequently paints his subjects in their least attractive moments and in, perhaps, their most vulnerable moments)

8. There is a thread running through this book that tells us that people that are “savagely ugly” in appearance must therefore also have a criminal temperament and vice versa, those that are attractive cannot be bad. How did these ideas affect Marie?

9. Why do you think Antoinette was so devoted to Emile?

10. Did you ever think Emile was wrongly accused of the crimes he was on trial for? When did your opinion change?

11. Why did Marie work so hard to get Emile out of Antoinette’s life?

12. Antoinette was a compulsive liar through most of the book, so then why does she become a compulsive truth teller at the end of the story?  Does she go overboard with her refusal to tell even white lies?

13. Do you support Antoinette’s decision to tell “one last lie” to Marie, the lie about Emile’s guilt?

14. What do you think of the way the author ends this book?  Was it satisfying to you?

15. Is there anything in this book that wasn’t covered that you would like to discuss?

 

16. Fast round – What was your overall opinion of this book?