The Hope Factory (Lavanya Sankaran)

Headline Publishing Group (Hatchette), 978-0755327874

I read Lavanya Sankaran's debut book - a collection of short stories - many years ago, and with great anticipation. Finally an author writing about 'people like us', ordinary middle class professionals, in Bangalore, an Indian city under-represented in IWE. Despite its occasionally erratic quality I was struck at the time by the promise her writing showed and I've been waiting to read more of her work ever since.

It's been over 6 years now, and her first novel, The Hope Factory, is also based in Bangalore and the middle class milieu. Anand K. Murthy is the young (well, relatively young, though in a country where the average age is 22, he would be considered well middle-aged), upwardly-mobile businessman, well married, with a beautiful, elegant wife, two loveable children and a house supported by a large staff. To outward appearances, he is living the Indian dream. As we get deeper into his life and thoughts, however, it becomes clear that there are deeper, darker issues undermining his relationships and his business. Interspersed with his story, is that of his domestic help Kamala, and the difficult journey that brings her and her son, Narayan, into his life. Kamala works as a domestic help under Vidya's direction, while aspiring and planning to create a better future for her only son. She lives in a little village-within-the-city - a common feature in a growing metro like Bangalore.

Over the course of the novel we follow their lives through an eventful period of change and growth. While their stories and fates aren't entirely inter-dependent, they certainly are inter-mingled, and the reader goes back and forth between the two worlds. Sankaran's writing is simple and terse, and largely, she manages to inhabit the very varying worlds of her two main protagonists, speaking their language and reflecting their thoughts. Her strength really lies in character portrayal. The Landbroker (as he is called through the novel) becomes an almost Dickensian character in her capable hands, as does Harry Chinappa, Anand's social climbing Anglophile father-in-law. Sankaran also exhibits a clever, sharp turn of phrase that occasionally has the reader guffaw in surprise - "the HR man's eyes were alight with mad sociological schemes that raised his hair in little black and gray tufts behind his ear," or "Inviting visitors to the country was like bringing friends to a home where alcoholic parents rampaged out of control."

Over all, Sankaran manages to give us a nuanced description of relationships, including that of Anand and his ever-aspiring wife Vidya. The character of Harry Chinappa, however, verges sometimes on caricature and I felt like the author could have spent a little more time building up the character of the enigmatic and fascinating Kavika Iyer. There are many familiar themes here - Bangalore's (and the country's) rapid and often unplanned growth, the India of yesteryears with its shortages and restricted supplies vs. India of today with it's Dubai-gleaming malls and new watering-holes manned by young people in Converse sneakers, twenty-varieties of everything and uninhibited consumerism- whose depiction has been covered in multiple other books on India and now seem somewhat clichéd.

 My other criticism of the novel would be that Sankaran sometimes introduces us to an overwhelming range of characters like the vapid professional son, Sameer Reddy, or Harry and Ruby Chinappa's Richmond Town friends. Many of these characters don't seem to serve any specific purpose in the main plot and are there merely to present certain stereotypes of Bangalore characters. Like her debut short stories, the writing is somewhat erratic, though it occasionally sparkles in its simplicity. While Sankaran's prose doesn't quite manage the elegant clarity of say Jhumpa Lahiri, The Hope Factory is well worth a read, and I look forward to her next novel.

Loving Frank (Nancy Horan)

Random House, 978-0-345-49500-6

As Frank Lloyd Wright’s star was rising on the architectural horizon in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, he fell in love with the wife of one of his clients, Mamah Borthwick Cheney. Mamah, after a tumultuous affair with Frank Lloyd Wright moved in with him, leaving husband and two young children. She had chosen “her womanhood over her wifehood and motherhood” a choice which in the early 1900s would have evoked nothing but scorn and criticism. Nancy Horan’s “Loving Frank” is the fictionalized version of the love affair of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney and their years together. In telling their story, Horan also covers the architect’s work as well as the social history of the times.

Wright ‘s personality, his charisma and genius on the one side, his large ego, impulsive nature, irresponsible spending habits on the other are well documented through the eyes of his lover Mamah Borthwick. As we read, we are exposed to major events in Frank Lloyd Wright’s life, his sojourn in Europe and later in Japan, his building of the Oak Park homes, Taliesin in Wisconsin and the Chicago Midway.

We are also educated in his architectural principles. Frank Lloyd Wright dismissed the imported European styles of architecture that had been used thus far by Americans. He developed a style unique to the physical, social and spiritual needs of Americans. He became known for his prairie style buildings and later for organic style edifices. His inspiration and muse was nature. He believed that a building must grow from the landscape and land. The geometry, materials and design of the building must be integrated with the land it stood on. He considered man to be part of nature. Man’s dwelling he felt must arise from and blend with the landscape around him. “Every landscape has its own latent poetry. Let the contours of the land and the plants reveal to you the geometry of its soul” pg 168. He believed that architecture must express the spirit of the place. “I’d rather look at a pine tree for inspiration” he said “It teaches me more about architecture than all the marble of St. Peter’s. A pine tree speaks to my soul”. He built his home “Taliesin” in Wisconsin, a building where “shelter and nature were fused” pg 212.

The book also documents the social history of the times. The women’s movement is underway. Women are joining the workforce, they are fighting for the vote, for equal pay for equal work, for personal freedom. We are introduced to the Swedish feminist Ellen Keys whose work Mamah Borthwick translated. An extra marital affair gives rise to extreme hostility in the community, it is the subject of vicious articles and headlines in the press, it is mentioned as part of sermons on Sunday’s in the church, children are removed from the school where the architect’s aunts teach, Frank Wright loses contracts on account of his love life, the couple is ostracized and isolated. To us today all this seems like overreaction but such were those times.

Mamah Borthwick was a scholar and intellectual; she had a master’s degree and spoke several languages. The reader is apt to look upon her abandonment of her children unkindly but if divorce was better accepted in the society of the time, she would have done what many couples do today – had a responsible involvement in her children’s lives with joint custody. When we curtail people’s personal freedoms they are forced to make poor decisions that hurt others and neglect responsibility. I can imagine that many readers would disagree with me on this point. Overall I liked Mamah. She was a good influence on Wright, often taming him and courageously pointing out his follies. The author portrays her as a woman of sensitivity, fairness and compassion. In the novel, it is Mamah who captures the reader’s imagination more than her famous lover. I felt however that she paid a very hefty price for “Loving Frank”; she lost access to her children, her sister, she bore the torment of the press and society in general, she lived without friends. She gave up everything for this one love. She had my sympathy.

The pace of the novel drags in the middle. Other than that one criticism I enjoyed the book. It will force me to explore Frank Lloyd Wright’s work in greater detail. It makes me aware that the social freedom’s we women enjoy today are due to the efforts of women who came before us and fought for those rights and sometimes paid a great price.

Love Letters (Katie Fforde)

Arrow Books, 9780099525042

'Can be scoffed at one sitting - tasty!' says Cosmopolitan's review on the back cover of this book. And it's 100% truth. I finished it in one evening.

A lady next to me on the Tube was reading Love Letters with a huge grin on her face. And for anyone to show any sort of emotion on the Tube while reading a book is rare enough to make me want to read what they're reading! So the happy coincidence that this very title happened to be in the window of the charity shop I was passing shortly afterwards had to have been fate.

And yes, I too read the book with a happy smile on my face. It's that kind of book. Not hugely intellectual or with very great depth.... but a charming love story with realistic characters and a great deal of humour.

Laura is a shy girl, content with her job at a bookstore and organising literary events for it. But the shop is about to close, and she'll be out of work within a few months. So when a literary agent tells her she might have something of interest, she ought to take it seriously. One thing leads to another, and in the spirit of making a literary festival a success, she's drafted to go to Ireland and bring back a reluctant author - who just happens to be her literary idol. Needless to say, he's also very attractive.

Some may say that this is a predictable story, but whatever! I enjoyed it, and I'm going looking for more Katie Fforde so I can have some more relaxing evenings with a happy book. So should you!

Sea of Poppies (Amitav Ghosh)

Penguin Canada, 9780143175360

Sea of Poppies, the first of the Ibis Trilogy is a colossal tale of epic proportions set in the 1830’s in British India. The novel covers several themes but the themes of British involvement in the opium trade and the shipment of indentured labour from India to various British Colonies occupies much of the novel. The sprawling narrative weaves a detailed and intriguing plot, filled with a cast of very diverse characters that span a wide range from British Sahibs and Rajahs to convicts and opium addicts. The author maintains the reader’s interest throughout the 500 plus pages as the plot cleverly unfolds.

The trade of opium financed much of the British Raj in India. Farmers in north-east India did grow modest amounts of poppies along with grain and vegetables before the British arrived. However after the British discovered the profits opium trade would add to their coffers, farmers were compelled to grow poppies in large quantities, opium was manufactured in factories nearby and exported mostly to China. Opium was known to the Chinese as well from as early as the 7th century but it was used mostly for medicinal purposes. The practice of using opium for smoking was introduced to China by Europeans. The British worked hard to create an appetite for opium in China. China passed edicts making it illegal to smoke opium but the British East India Company continued to export opium from India to China. When China wanted the British to stop exporting opium over concern for the addiction it was creating, the British went to war – the famous Opium Wars. The novel dramatizes British lack of concern for the damage the drug was causing to the Indian labourers engaged in its production as well as to the general population of China to whom they marketed the product. Both the Church and Crown turned a blind eye to the opium trade, the opium factories “were institutions steeped in Anglican piety” (pg 91) and the Ghazipur Opium Factory was “among the most precious jewels in Queen Victoria’s crown” (pg 92).

Under British colonial rule another “commodity” exported in large quantities was indentured labour. The demand for indentured labour increased dramatically after the abolition of slavery. Young able bodied Indians were willing to go to faraway lands as labour, to escape the poverty at home but they knew little of the lands they were going to or the conditions they would have to endure. The Ibis in the novel carries labourers to Mauritius under circumstances no better than slave ships carrying slaves from Africa to America.

The book does not portray the British in a positive light. Their colonization of most of the world being based on the belief that they were a chosen race upon whom the Almighty had imposed the divine mission to look after the welfare of people “as were still in the infancy of civilization”, “people incapable of the proper conduct of their own affairs” (pg 236). As Mr. Chillingworth says in the novel, “we are no different from the Pharoahs or Mongols; the difference is only that when we kill people we feel compelled to pretend that it is for some higher cause. It is this pretense of virtue......that will never be forgiven in history”.

The author is a master story teller. The story has several sub plots and the craftsmanship of the author brings them together on the Ibis. Amitav Ghosh’s prose is flawless. I highly recommend the book to all lovers of historical fiction and love of language. The book is the first in a trilogy so the end of the book may not be satisfactory to some readers but on the other hand it makes the reader eager for the next novel in the series.

Miss Timmins' School for Girls (Nayana Currimbhoy)

Harper Collins India, 9780061997747

The reader of Malory Towers or the Chalet School series might be a little put out on first reading "Miss Timmins" - this isn't the world of midnight feasts and girlish high jinks involving leaky fountain pens.

Set in 1974 Panchgini, in the hills of Maharashtra, Miss Timmins' School for Girls is certainly a throwback to colonial times, but the students are now Indian upper middle class and the staff comprises of Anglo-Indians, holding strong to their British antecedents and accents.

Into this world comes naif, Charulata Apte, recent college graduate, escaping her family's mysterious scandal. The story opens with Charulata's perspective, as she tremulously, and somewhat ambivalently (she would much rather be in Bombay, wearing bell bottoms) negotiates this world of professional and social hierarchies. Very early on she finds herself oddly drawn to another young teacher, Miss Moira Prince, a young Englishwoman encumbered with a secret (one which becomes increasingly obvious with every description of her). Through "the Prince's" frienship, Charulata is introduced to a world of weed, rock music and sexual awakening.

At this point, though, the novel changes in tenor - one morning a body is found at the base of a cliff and murder brings chaos to the school. Here the narrative shifts and the murder investigation is taken on by a gang of intrepid school girls, leading to some scandalous revelations and ultimately the discovery of the murderer. Currimbhoy excels at shifting the tone and perspective of the novel and keeping the pace tight by throwing in revelations and twists, but to my mind, the section told by the schoolgirls is the weakest of the book.

Charulata is the primary protagonist, and yet she remains intriguing and somewhat oblique till the end, her emotions most clearly displayed by the mysterious blemish on her face. While the author has a real knack for creating evocative atmosphere and snidely depicting social snobbery, I found the murder mystery aspect of the book somewhat less compelling. Erratic in quality and sometimes scattered because of the plethora of characters and multiplicity of genres - murder mystery, coming-of-age novel, social commentary, Sapphic love story - Miss Timmins works best as a novel about the coming-of-age of young Ms Apte in a forgotten part of Maharashtra. Despite its somewhat patchy quality in parts, I found it an enjoyable read. This is one of those books I would lend to a friend so that we could then discuss it together.

The Midwife of Venice (Roberta Rich)

Gallery Books, 9781451657470

The Midwife of Venice is the story of Hannah and Isaac Levi, a Jewish couple living in Venice. Hannah is a midwife and Isaac a trader. A Christian nobleman, asks Hannah to help his wife who has been in labour for two days. Hannah helps the Christian woman, against the counsel of her Rabbi who reminds her that for a Jew to render medical assistance to a Christian is against the law. As the story opens, Isaac has been captured in Malta and is enduring much suffering as a slave but hoping to be ransomed. The story develops against this background.

The subject has great promise and we do get glimpses of the social history of 16th century Venice and the surrounding areas. Poverty, disease and discrimination make for a hard life especially for the Jews. The book was an easy read and the suspense kept me reading and turning the pages but overall the book was disappointing. The subject had plenty of scope but the author I felt did not delve into the details adequately and therefore did not sufficiently develop the themes of the book.

The whole idea of midwifery, one of the central themes of the book was not described in enough detail. We see Hannah attending only one delivery. Other themes of the book, e.g Jewish customs and rituals or anti Semitism also are not sufficiently explored. Hannah is a very attractive character – intelligent, courageous, as is Isaac but we don’t know enough about them. What was Hannah’s background? How did she come to be a midwife? We meet no characters in the book other than characters central to the plot. The plot itself is weak and far too contrived. There are no sub plots to develop the main themes of the novel.

The book is a fast read and will definitely hold your attention but it is no more than that. It lacks the depth that would make it a good book. The idea is good, the execution leaves the reader wanting.

Scion of Cyador (L.E. Modesitt Jr.)

Tor Books, 978184149101

Scion of Cyador is actually the second part in a two book series, set within the larger framework of Modesitt's Saga of Recluce. The series is far from being in internal chronological order, in fact, this particular duology was written much later (2001) but is in fact a prequel to the entire Recluce saga, set about four hundred years before The Magic of Recluce (1991) the first of the Saga of Recluce books.  The prequel to Scion of Cyador, Magi'i of Cyador is generally considered to be the beginning of the Calendar used throughout the series. This calender has no weeks, instead it has an 8-day time period, covering seven different time periods and ten major storylines.

In The Saga of Recluce, order and chaos are tangible forces to be manipulated at will. Of course, like all forms of power, a restrictive, traditionalist elite (Order Mages and Chaos Wizards)  control it. This'll take some explaining, but fortunately for the sake of this review, there are no order Mages in the empire of Cyad, only chaos wielders. It's a little confusing, but it does establish that chaos was around to be manipulated well before order was. It's a fairly clichéd beginning, the reason for the existence of both Order and Chaos Mages is visits from beyond the stars. The stars are often referred to as the Rational Stars, referring to the rationalists - a group of wayfaring galactic travellers -  who came to Candar (the continent on which Cyad, later known as Fairhaven) and were technologically advanced Mages whose descendants would take up the mantle of ruling by chaos, so to speak. It's important to remember that chaos doesn't necessarily mean entropy and nothing else, although, to be fair, in the books told through the perspectives of the chaos wielders - Lorn and Cerryl* - (both Chaos Mages albeit very different ones) that is what is primarily used for, as a weapon. It can be used for other purposes, though, like cleaning sewers. The advanced technology that the Rationalists bequeathed to their descendants include fireships, firelances, fire cannon...is a pattern starting to emerge? Fire, being in many ways the embodiment of chaos, is naturally the primary element. However, by the time of the events of Scion of Cyador, the fireships etcetera are beginning to fail, and everyone knows it's just a matter of time before advanced weaponry disappears altogether. Lorn, the primary protagonist and narrative focus of Scion of Cyador, knows this, but finds it difficult to convince others of the truth of it, especially the more traditional minded Senior Mages, particularly Kharl, the scheming Second Magus, who will sacrifice anything and everything to his ambition of succeeding the ailing Emperor of Cyad.

What makes The Saga of Recluce fairly unique in its marvellousness (the magical element, or the source of the ability to manipulate the forces of nature) is the way in which the basic forces of entropy (chaos) and molecular binding (order) can be utilized. It can be remarkably job-oriented; a lot of the Order Mages are vocationally trained, like Dorrin the Smith, or Lerris the Carpenter. Essentially, this is quantum manipulation, with the forces being channelled through individuals of great skill and talent, although (mostly for political reasons) they try and conceal that.The White Mages, especially in SoC, are more enforcers than rulers, although they do build roads, and occasionally raise mountains, although this changes by the time of the Cerryl books, when the White Mages are the power in the city of Fairhaven and most of the Continent of Candar. However the events of this dulogy are set well before that, and this is the best place to start, chronologically speaking.  Lorn is probably my favourite out of all of Modesitt's protagonists, and this is one book I've read time and again from cover to cover, not just skipping through to my favourite bits. Click on read more for details about the series, and specifics on Scion of Cyador.

Gone Girl (Gillian Flynn)

Hatchette India, 9781780221359

The ‘He said-She said’ literary technique is not new in fiction writing, but Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl treats double-sided narrative in new and interesting ways. Amy and Nick Dunne have the traditional meet-cute, and after a romantic courtship and wedding, make plans for their perfect, Manhattan life together, ordering Chinese take-out at 2am and doing drinks at trendy little bars.

The plummeting economy changes all that, and both lose their jobs. Simultaneously, Nick’s mother is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and he decides to uproot his Manhattan-bred wife to move to his hometown in Missouri. Two years later Amy suddenly disappears on their fifth anniversary, leaving behind a living room full of shattered glass, and a treasure hunt of verbal clues.

Told in the present, by Nick Dunne, and in the past by Amy Elliot Dunne’s diary entries, the narrative toggles between the two very distinct perspectives, and the reader is left with some clues, but also a lot of questions. How did the relationship degenerate to this point? And why does Nick have a disposable phone that he keeps making calls on? Nick, the quintessential American golden boy, clearly has a few dark secrets, but did he also kill his beautiful wife? Both Amy and Nick emerge as flawed, fascinating characters.

Without revealing too many spoilers, Amy is a female protagonist from the Lisbeth Sanders school of action – she simultaneously invites our sympathy and shock. Flynn’s prose is sharp and restrained, her descriptions of both settings and characters wryly insightful, and her control over the narrative is masterful – at no point does the suspense flag.

Gone Girl is a page-turner and works both as a psychological thriller and a depiction of the downward spiral of a marriage. The book is a commentary on media in America and portrays a dystopian post-recession Mid-America, where unemployed housewives donate blood to make extra cash and gangs of violent, homeless men living in an abandoned mall. I raced through to the book to the chilling end, and am now in search of other, equally gripping reading.

Far To Go (Alison Pick)

House of Anansi Press, 9780887842382

While all the cruelty and atrocities were being perpetrated by the Nazis in the late 1930s, there were a few brave individuals who took it upon themselves to help the victims of Hitler’s genocide. One such unsung hero was Nicholas Winton, a 29 year old British stockbroker, who having visited Prague, decided to do something to save the Jewish children prior to Hitler’s invasion of Czechoslovakia. He organized trains that would carry Czech children from Prague to London where they would be looked after by British families. Thousands of Czech parents contacted Nicholas Winton to hand over their children to his care and so almost 700 Jewish children from Czechoslovakia were saved by him as most of their parents lost their lives in the death camps of Dachau and Auschwitz. The author’s own grandparents fled Czechoslovakia for Canada during the World War so this is a deeply personal book.

Hitler’s annexation of Sudetenland, the subsequent conquest of Czechoslovakia, and the rescue of children from Czechoslovakia is the background of Pick’s Far to Go. It is a riveting story of the Bauer family and in their predicament and suffering we learn of similar suffering of thousands of Czech citizens at the hands of the Nazis. The plot is fast paced and though we have read other stories set during the holocaust, Alison Pick’s story of the proud but defeated Pavel Bauer, his wife Anneleise, their son Pepik and nanny Marta is emotionally powerful.

Each character reacts to the political happenings of the time in his/her own way. Pavel tries to hang on to a semblance of order for a long time sometimes refusing to read the writing on the wall. He has been a secular Jew all these years, hardly practicing the rituals of Judaism but as the Nazis work to exterminate the Jews, he finds himself more drawn to the heritage of his ancestors. Anneleise on the otherhand distances herself from her faith and drowns her fears for the future in clothes and shoes, Marta the nanny, not Jewish herself, struggles to reconcile the growing anti Semitism around her and her own love for the Bauers, particularly the little boy Pepik.

The plot is very realistic – not all marriages survive chaos and suffering, not all friends help in a crisis, not all British families welcome their charges under the kindertransport program.

Of particular interest is the mystery narrator of the story. The reader is left wondering whose voice is telling the story as slowly, bit by bit the narrator’s identity is revealed. The latter part of the book is excellent in which pages the author gives a heart breaking description of the fear and anxiety experienced by little Pepik as he is separated from his family as part of the kindertransport program. One can easily imagine what this must have been like for child and parents.

Alison Pick’s book was long listed for the prestigious Booker Prize in 2011. It is a simple story but powerful. It leaves you thinking about those who suffered, it leaves the reader wondering why we bring so much suffering to each other, what it is that prevents us from living in peace and allowing others to have the same life we wish for ourselves. And yet it is encouraging that while some like Ernst will use the climate of discrimination to further their own interests, there are others who will risk their lives to help. Tough times separate the men from the boys. I encourage you to read Far to Go. I hesitate to say you will “enjoy” the book because of the subject of the plot but the book is well written, the characters are real, flawed humans and the book exposes you to the history of Nazi occupation and conquest of Czechoslovakia and the kindertransport program that saved the lives of several Jewish children.

The Painted Girls (Cathy Marie Buchanan)

Riverhead Books, 978-1594486241

I was lucky to get an advance copy of The Painted Girls. It is the touching story of Marie Van Goethem, the fourteen year old model for Degas’ sculpture 'Little Dancer Aged Fourteen'. Though the story is fictionalized, much of the novel is in keeping with facts. The author has woven the story around two pieces of art by Degas – the statuette 'Little Dancer Aged Fourteen' and a Degas painting titled 'Criminal Physiognomies'.

The background of 'Little Dancer Aged Fourteen' is Marie Van Goethem and the Paris Opera where very young girls often from poor families strive for success on the stage. They are Painted Girls – their gaunt faces and thin arms painted for the stage. 'We are the daughters of sewing maids and fruit peddlars, char women and laundresses, dressed up and painted to look like something we are not.......girls born into squalor trying to find grace in ballet'. Degas sees young Marie at ballet practice and chooses her to be his model for 'Little Dancer Aged Fourteen'. When that sculpture was displayed at the Sixth Impressionist Exhibition of 1881, it received mixed reviews. The majority of critics were shocked by the piece. They said the girl was ugly, 'a flower of the gutter', that Degas had picked 'from the hothouse of the theatre a sapling of precocious depravity”, that her face had “the detestable promise of every vice'. She looked like a medical specimen, they reported, in part because Degas exhibited the sculpture inside a glass case. People said the sculpture would look more at home in a Natural History Museum. The critics did not remember that behind the sculpture was a real child, poor, hungry, tired, trying to earn a meal by posing for an artist.

The background of Degas’ 'Criminal Physiognomies', were two murders that took place in Paris. Two young men, Emile Abadie and Pierre Gille were arrested, tried and sentenced for murder.

Painted Girls is written against this artistic background. However it is above all a poignant story of three sisters. In telling the story of the Van Goethem sisters, whose father is dead and mother an alcoholic, Cathy Marie Buchanan has explored several themes – the love that binds the sisters is a major theme; Childhood poverty is another. Children like Marie and her sisters Antoinette and Charlotte are born to a life devoid of nourishment, love, security, guidance, role models. Monsieur Zola would say they don’t have 'a lick of a chance'. The novel is Dickensian in its treatment of childhood poverty.

The book exposed me for the first time to the current ideas of the day with respect to biological determinism which had their source in Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. Degas like several others of his time, believed in the concept of 'innate criminality'. The idea that certain members of society were throwbacks to earlier, more animalistic evolutionary stages was not Degas's alone. Degas had gone to the courtroom during the Abadie-Gille trial and sketched the two men with animalistic expressions. At the 1881 Impressionist Exhibition, the statuette of Marie Van Goethem and the painting of Emile Abadie and Pierre Gille were placed next to each other. Was Degas hinting at Marie’s possible criminality in the future? Was that prediction based on nothing more than her appearance or social class? This and other topics the book covers will make for animated discussion.

I enjoyed the structure of the book alternating between Marie and Antoinette as narrator, interspersed with newspaper clippings from The Figaro. Both narrators captivated my attention. Something else I enjoyed in the book was Paris. It was not the Paris of lights and glitz but rather the underbelly of Paris with its poverty, slums, violence and prisons.

Painted Girls is also a novel about survival and the resilient human spirit. If you like historical fiction you will enjoy this book. It forced me to go back to Degas, re-read his biography and enjoy his works once again, many of which I had just seen at the Musee D’Orsay in Paris including 'Little Dancer Aged Fourteen'. I found the book educational since the author stays close to known facts, I enjoyed the story and I loved the ending. I enjoyed Buchanan’s The Day the Falls Stood Still immensely. That would have been a hard act to follow but Painted Girls was just as good. I want to go back to Paris, to the museums and see Degas’ works once again. I will look at the dancers, bathers, laundresses differently for having read this book. I highly recommend the book to lovers of Paris, historical fiction, art or just those looking for a good read.