Kathryn Wagner

Aspiring dancer Alexandrie enters the Paris Opera Ballet in hopes of supporting her farming family, but finds her plans challenged by her growing love for enigmatic Impressionist artist Edgar Degas.

A Novel

Dancing for Degas

Missy Zuber 

Enjoyable. Likable characters. 
Not 100% sure I like how Degas was portrayed at times.

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** spoiler alert **
           One of the main problems with this book for me was that I never felt that the author connected the reader to the characters and thus their emotions felt flat. The other is that the plot becomes mired in a seemingly endless string of years where the dancers dance, the men choose mistresses, and Alexandrie models for Degas. I felt that the author could have either made more of the middle of the book to connect the reader more firmly to the story and more fully develop the characters or she could have cut whole sections from it without any adverse impact.

This is the story of Alexandrie, a girl from a small farming village in France. She is born into a poor family of pepper farmers and is a perpetual disappointment to her mother. Her mother is embittered by the hard work and subsistence existence of being a farmer's wife and takes it out on Alexandrie. Both parents have their hopes pinned on their son's prearranged marriage but when he instead marries a local girl from a destitute family, all eyes turn to Alexandrie to pull the family out of the hole.

Alexandrie begins ballet lessons as part of her mother's plan to send her to the ballet in Paris. Once established in Paris, she is to put every effort into becoming the mistress of a wealthy man so that she can support her family.

The pace of the story moves along fairly well until Alexandrie gets to Paris. After her introduction to the ballet, things become a monotonous depiction of ballet practice and chatter about which girls end up with which men. Alexandrie also discovers that after age 25, dancers must become courtesans (prostitutes) in order to stay in the ballet. Upon reading the author's notes at the end of the book, I found that there is no evidence that the Paris ballet functioned as a high-end brothel and I thought this was a significant and undeserved liberty that the author took with actual history.

Alexandrie eventually makes the acquaintance of Edgar Degas and begins to model for him. She finds him to be rude and tempermental but then inexplicably falls in love with him. At the same time, she is courted by Julian, a wealthy patron who wants her to become his mistress. She moves back and forth between the two men, stalling Julian while trying to encourage Edgar. Finally, Edgar makes it clear that there is no future with him and she accepts Julian's offer. As Julian informs her of his terms to be his mistress, she purposefully repulses him and he withdraws his offer. She is now left with no choice but to become a courtesan.

She accepts the offer of her first "customer", only to find that it is a wealthy American who has purchased several Degas paintings of her. Instead of buying her favors for a night, he proposes marriage and voila, she is saved. No explanation is offered as to why he waited so many years for her, why he jumped right to a marriage proposal without even knowing her, or why he waited until she was willing to prostitute herself before he came to her rescue.

This story has promise and the author does a nice job of incorporating Degas's history and a sense of being in Paris in the 1800's.

Dancing for Degas A Novel

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