Meet The Authors Of FGLF 2017: Cathy Marie Buchanan 

The 8th edition of the Fairway Galle Literary Festival is back bigger than ever and will take place from the 11th to the 15th of January 2017. 

In the weeks leading up to the Festival, we catch up with some of the biggest authors set to attend the 2017 Festival! 

We brought you exclusive interviews with Lesley Hazleton, Dame Margaret Drabble, Colm Toibin, Amish Tripathi and Philippa Gregory. Today, we feature Cathy Marie Buchanan. 

Cathy Marie Buchanan is a No.1 national bestseller in Canada and a New York Times bestseller. Her book ‘The Painted Girls’ was a bestseller and was even named a best book of 2013 by NPR, Good Housekeeping and Goodreads. 

We speak to Cathy about what makes a book successful! 

What’s the inspiration behind your book ‘The Painted Girls’? 

Years ago, I happened on a television documentary called The Private Life of a Masterpiece: Little Dancer Aged Fourteen. I would learn Marie van Goethem, an impoverished student at the Paris Opera dance school, had modelled for the famous Edgar Degas sculpture. I would also learn that on its unveiling back in 1881, the public linked Little Dancer with a life of vice and young girls for sale. She was called a “flower of the gutter” and her face was said to be “imprinted with the detestable promise of every vice.” Such notions were underpinned by a long history of often less than noble liaisons between the young dancers at the Paris Opéra Ballet and the wealthy male season ticket holders. The revelations flew in the face of my modern-day notions of ballet as a high-minded pursuit of privileged girls. I was fascinated and knew Marie’s story was one I wanted to tell. 

The book is inspired by real life events. How did you conduct your research and how true to reality did you want your book to be? 

Before putting pen to paper, I spent six months researching The Painted Girls, a task that was purely pleasurable. Much of my research took the form of reading histories of Paris, ballet and art. I extensively used Gallica, the online library for the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, particularly for researching the notorious criminal trial that is central to the novel’s plot. I had an excellent research trip to Paris. Highlights included finding Degas’s studio and the apartment building where his model Marie van Goethem lived, researching in the Paris Opéra archives, touring Palais Garnier and taking in a ballet there. Best of all, though, was attending a class of fourteen-year-old girls at the Paris Opéra Ballet school. Though thirty years and a continent away from my own days at the barre, I was struck by how familiar the exercises, the corrections and the music were to me. It gave me confidence in tackling the novel. Though I have lived a very different life from Marie van Goethem, our experience in the ballet studio was likely quite similar. 

I stuck to the known facts of Marie’s life, and though those facts are scant, it was always my aim to create an entirely plausible story for her. That meant I was meticulous in my research, whether it be getting Degas’s process right or figuring out what a poor girl in belle époque Paris might eat. 

If you could categorize your writing into one particular genre, what would it be and why? 

Historical fiction. My two published novels, as well as my work in progress, were inspired lesser known historical figures. 

Both your books, ‘The Day the Falls Stood Still’ and ‘The Painted Girls’ are bestsellers. In your opinion, what makes a book successful? 

As a reader, what I most admire in a book is an author’s ability to articulate some thought or idea I recognize as profoundly true and yet had not previously known. Of course, we all want to be entertained as we read, but I think the most satisfying books give us insight into our world. 

Before you became a writer, you were pursuing a corporate career. What inspired or pushed you to decide to leave the corporate culture to become a writer? 

During high school, while mostly taking math and science classes, I satisfied my creative yearnings by studying ballet, and by designing and sewing most of my clothes. I continued to nurture my artistic side during my corporate career through a string of night school courses, always something with an artistic bent. I took painting, drawing, woodworking, art history and interior design, before hitting upon creative writing. Then, right from the first class, I was smitten. A four-year period followed, where I continued my fulltime work by day and, in the evening, either attended a creative writing class or crammed in a bit of writing. Eventually the desire to tackle my first novel trumped the security of sound employment, and I took the plunge, leaving the corporate world to write The Day the Falls Stood Still. 

Any idea where you may find inspiration for your next novel? 

I’m deep into the rewrites for novel number three—Devotion. It’s another work of historical fiction, this time set 2000 years ago in Iron Age Britain on the eve of Roman conquest. It involves a child soothsayer, druids, pagan religion, superstition and magic. I found inspiration in a newspaper image of a bog body—a body beautifully preserved over the millennia by the chemical composition of the surrounding bog. As I took in the razor stubble and fingerprints of the body, I grew more and more curious about life 2000 years ago and in particular about a time when magic, rather than science, explained our world. 

Want to get yourself tickets to meet Cathy Marie Buchanan? 

Box office is now open! Tickets  available online at www.mydeal.lk/fairway-glf-2017 or at the box offices mentioned below; 

Colombo: 740, Galle Road, Bambalapitiya. Hotline number - 0717040011 
Galle: 25, Leyn Baan Street Galle Fort. Hotline number - 0717 020011 

Open Mon - Fri (9:00AM - 6:30PM), Sat (9:00AM - 5:00PM)​​ 
Closed: Sunday and mercantile holidays