Degas Must Have Loved a Dancer

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 where 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? But . . .

Set in Belgium, where these young Americans work, one to take a nanny’s job, the other to debut his art in a cousin’s gallery, the novel reveals a good deal about the Euro youth scene, while exploring the carpe diem theme in a most devastating manner.