KAREN’S KILLER BOOK BENCH: Welcome to Karen’s Killer Book Bench, where readers can discover talented new authors and take a peek inside their wonderful books. This is not an age-filtered site, so all book peeks are PG-13 or better. Come back and visit often. Happy reading!
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GIRL BRAIDING HER HAIR
Light & Life Series Book 2
BY MARTA MOLNAR
BLURB
She was an innocent..until she met Renoir.
The greatest artists in Paris never suspected that their favorite model was learning their techniques while she was posing for them. Art schools didn’t accept female students, but Suzanne Valadon knew how to fight for what she wanted. By the time she was 15, she’d been a horse walker, a funeral wreath maker, and a circus acrobat.
This is the story of a survivor.
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GIRL BRAIDING HER HAIR
Light & Life Series Book 2
BY MARTA MOLNAR
EXCERPT
All the world hates a bastard.
Whenever we have to write bible verses on our slate at school, the priest always gives me the same one: A bastard shall not enter into the Lord’s flock.
A bastard all the world mocks.
To be a bastard is to be chained. To climb is to be free. To climb is to fly. To climb is to be safe. When I’m on them rooftops, I can see all of Paris, but ain’t nobody can see me.
Except them blasted nuns at St. Vincent de Paul. Nuns see everything.
“Marie-Clémentine Valadon!” Sister Marguerite hollers up, her black habit whipping in the wind. She might yet sail away. If only. “You come down this second.”
I flatten myself to the convent roof. I’m as still and silent as the dead, but for my growling stomach. The thin cabbage soup for lunch was little more than water.
“Marie-Clémentine Valadon!”
I don’t as much as twitch. Maybe she hasn’t really seen me this time. She might well be guessing.
Except, she’s looking right at me.
I push to my feet. “I’m staying up here.”
And since I’m standing, I might as well stand tall. I pose like the statue of Jean d’Arc.
My boring classmates pelt me with jeers from below. I look at them right down my nose. I bet Jean d’Arc didn’t even have to go to school. Persecuted is what I am. I stick out my chin. I’m more than a bastard. I’m more than a washerwoman’s daughter. Someday, I’m gonna be somebody.
“Marie-Clémentine.”
“You ain’t gonna catch me.” I dart along the edge, rooftiles clanking under my feet. “I’m a monkey!”
While the nuns can’t bring me down, Monsieur Winter does, eventually.
I slink into the classroom, to the back row, with frozen hands and feet. The stone wall radiates cold, ain’t much of an improvement, but at least I’m safe from the wind.
The back is where the worst students sit, farthest from the stove is in the front. The girls in the first rows—the ones the nuns like, the ones that stupidly hang on Sister Marguerite’s every word—don’t even have coats on.
I envy them the heat, but the back has an important advantage. The sisters can’t see what I doodle on my slate. I draw a little dog scratching his ear, exactly the little dog I want, even if there ain’t an abundance of puppies in Paris. We ate the dogs and cats and rats, during the Prussian siege.
Maman says I shouldn’t remember—I was only six. But I remember that for months, all everyone ever said was Do you have anything to eat?
“Lemme see.” Clelia—my best friend, also a bastard—peers at the puppy. She’s worse off than I am, on the count that she’s Italian, an immigrant. She lives in an even poorer tenement. Her lips round in a silent ooh at my drawing, but then she drops her chin and whispers, “Duck!”
Duck’s our nickname for the sisters, because they waddle like mallards.
I wipe the slate with my sleeve and scribble a short sentence about The Third Republic, the topic of Sister Marguerite’s quacking. Then I slide down in my chair. Unless I misbehave, the nuns rarely notice me. I’m smallest in class. Maman says it’s because we never have enough food to eat.
“Terrible penmanship.” Sister Marguerite bends to my slate. “There is no point of you being here, if you refuse to learn. You are not even trying.” She raps her knuckles over my head then moves on. “You all must practice at home tonight. Tomorrow you’ll be writing on paper, with ink.”
About Author Marta Molnar…
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Links to Marta’s websites, blogs, books, #ad etc.:
Amazon: https://amzn.to/4gwFz8w
Website: http://www.martamolnar.com
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Special Giveaway: Marta will gift an ebook or paperback (U.S. Only) winner’s choice, to one lucky reader who comments on her Karen’s Killer Book Bench blog. Good Luck!
Happy Reading!
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Thanks, Marta, for sharing your book with us!
Don’t miss the chance to read this book!
I think I’m going to LOVE this story! Thank you for sharing!
I hope you will. I’d love to know what you think of it.
Thank you so much for having me as a guest! <3 I had so much fun with this book. I love anything art related. 🙂 Research was a blast. I got to spend some more time in Paris at the turn of the century.
Currently, I'm reading The Birth of Venus and loving it. (Historical fiction set in Florence Italy, at the time when Botticelli painted.) What are you reading? I'd love some art-related recommendations, but any good book, really. I've switched from TV to reading in the evenings and going through books pretty fast lately.
This story peaks my interest because of title & excerpt I really need to read more author is new to me
Good morning, Marta, and welcome back to Karen’s Killer Book Bench. I’m intrigued by stories that show how women found ways to work around their inability to enter a male-dominated society. Suzanne’s story is bound to be a great read. Thanks for sharing it with us today.
Thank you for having me here! Talking about books is my favorite thing! 🙂
While I find the premise fascinating, I find the dialogue to be more British in colloquial pattern than French.
Thank you, Marta, and thank you, Karen
I had such a hard time with that. The book is written in English, so how do I put it across that she was an uneducated young girl in the late 1800s? All I could use was the English equivalent. But then she sounds English, of course. But, well, that’s the language of the book. I couldn’t think of a better solution.
I have shared both you books Girl Braiding Her Hair and the Secret Life of Sunflowers with the young girls in my life. I want them to experience all the emotions I felt when reading them.
Thank you so much, Kathryn! Recommendations make a huge difference.
Good morning, your book sounds like a great read and I’m already hooked , Thank you for sharing the excerpt, I love it! Have a great day and a great rest of the week. Thank you for the chance.
Thank you for checking out my book!
intriguing
Thank you!
Love discovering new authors, sounds good!
This sounds like a compelling read.