1.08.2014

the painted girls review

I am a reader. I like to read and usually if I have spare time I grab a book…until lately. In the past I’ve easily read a book in a few day, but not lately. I want to get back into reading. I use Goodreads to keep a list of books I’ve read and those that I want to read. It’s also a great place to read reviews of books and find out what your friends are reading. Now I’m going to post the books as I finish them here on the blog as well as on Goodreads.
This is the first book of the year…I hope it gets better from here.

 Paris. 1878. 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 seventy francs a month, she will be trained to enter the famous ballet. Her older sister, Antoinette, finds work—and the love of a dangerous young man—as an extra in a stage adaptation of Émile Zola’s naturalist masterpiece L’AssommoirMarie throws herself into dance and is soon modelling in the studio of Edgar Degas, where her image will forever be immortalized as Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. Antoinette, meanwhile, descends lower and lower in society, and must make the choice between a life of honest labor and the more profitable avenues open to a young woman of the Parisian demimonde—that is, unless her love affair derails her completely. 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.”  - Goodreads
I've really struggled with rating this book.
I liked it more than a 2 star rating, but I'm not sure if it qualifies for 3 stars. I liked it...kind of. I don't know that I would recommend it to anyone.
The idea of the book is wonderful, but I didn't ever feel a connection to any of the characters. The story was pretty straight forward. Could I even say boring? I wasn't ever caught up in the story where time just disappeared while I was reading.
Rating: 3 stars


No comments:

Post a Comment