'The Painted Girls' review: Captivating tale of sisters' bond

Living in the slum of lower Montmartre, the girls aspire to be dancers at the Paris Opera Ballet, a resource for urchins to save themselves from life on the streets by balancing en pointe. Practicing long hours and fighting exhaustion and malnutrition, they could earn a meager income if they remain at the lowest rank of petit rat, but they could lead lavish lives if they climb to stardom.

When the novel opens, 17-year-old Antoinette has been dismissed from the ballet school for willfulness and belligerence. Marie, unattractive and exceptionally skinny, is harder-working, achieves short-lived success and poses for Degas' statuette at age 14. But Charlotte, 7, self-absorbed, pretty, craving bright sashes, is the natural dancer.

It's a story in the vein of 19th century naturalism, as deterministic as a Zola novel. As Buchanan reports, the Italian criminologist Cesare Lombroso theorized that certain cranial characteristics appearing in prehistoric man occur so frequently among modern criminals that they are scientific predictors of depravity: a low, sloping forehead, broad cheekbones, a forward thrust of the lower face. Poor Marie discovers this theory in a newspaper article and, since her face exhibits these characteristics, is haunted by the implications.

"The Painted Girls" is a captivating story of fate, tarnished ambition and the ultimate triumph of sister-love.

SEE PHOTOS15 must-read rock star biographies