Degas Must Have Loved a Dancer

Krista Madsen

 Synopsis:  This is Krista Madsen’s first novel. We liked her work so well that we’ve already accepted her second novel. In this first novel, a young artist and poet circle about solitary fantasies of one another—each afraid to commit any further after a chance meeting on a bus when the artist sketches the poet, whose hair has turned shockingly white despite her youth. Kismet, every character in the novel repeatedly tells these two. Kismet. How can you not go for it?

Set in Europe, where these young Americans have travelled, one to take a nanny’s job in France, the other to debut his works in a cousin’s gallery, the novel reveals a good deal about the Euro youth scene, while working out the carpe diem theme in a most devastating manner.

ISBN, trade paper: 978-1-931982-13-9, $14.95                  Sale $7.50

ISBN, library edition: 978-1-931982-12-2, $26                     Sale $13.00

Born and raised in Bristol, Connecticut, Krista Madsen received her undergraduate degree in English from Yale University and her MFA in creative writing from New School University. She lives in Brooklyn where she owns and operates an arts/wine lounge called Stain. She is the coeditor of Readingdivas.com.

  I clear the misted windowpane with my fingertip, writing and rewriting variations of my name over and over and over itself, until my name becomes stacked, indecipherable, letters on top of letters on top of letters . . . me — multiplied: Adina, Addie, Adeline, Adele, Adalina, Adrena, Aida . . . until there is no mist left to replace with blank pane and Myself stares back. I scrutinize this strange image — almost unfamiliar after a week in a youth hostel in Prague without a mirror — and search for what he might see. 
       Another excursion behind me, another aborted quest for the prime time and place to write.  Unmet desire propels me everywhere, where still the conditions never seem quite right. Growing up in Manhattan, I walked the same blocks as so many great talents, yet the density of their spirits, the towering and ubiquitous edifices of their fame, paralyzed me. To Europe, then, to observe from the outside in, where, among the novel beauty and sophistication of it all, novels would just seep from my pores.

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