Hello everyone! This month we'll be reading a book suggested by Suzanne, "Water For Elephants," by Sara Gruen. Here's a plot synopsis from Publishers Weekly:
With its spotlight on elephants, Gruen's romantic page-turner hinges on the human-animal bonds that drove her debut and its sequel (Riding Lessons and Flying Changes)—but without the mass appeal that horses hold. The novel, told in flashback by nonagenarian Jacob Jankowski, recounts the wild and wonderful period he spent with the Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth, a traveling circus he joined during the Great Depression. When 23-year-old Jankowski learns that his parents have been killed in a car crash, leaving him penniless, he drops out of Cornell veterinary school and parlays his expertise with animals into a job with the circus, where he cares for a menagerie of exotic creatures[...] He also falls in love with Marlena, one of the show's star performers—a romance complicated by Marlena's husband, the unbalanced, sadistic circus boss who beats both his wife and the animals Jankowski cares for. Despite her often clichéd prose and the predictability of the story's ending, Gruen skillfully humanizes the midgets, drunks, rubes and freaks who populate her book.
As we talked about at the meeting, if anyone has ideas for future book club choices, please post them here or send them to the group via e-mail.
Our next meeting will be at 7 p.m. Aug. 30 at the Gwinnett County Public Library's Collins Hill branch. Hope to see everyone there!
Wednesday, August 1, 2007
Thirteenth Tale setting?
At the meeting, we talked a bit about in what time period "The Thirteenth Tale" may have been set. I looked around a bit and found a few interesting theories:
From a blog about all things Bronte:
It is never specified when the novel is set in a deliberate attempt to suspend the real world outside the novel. Nevertheless there are clues around the novel that more or less point to dates about the late seventies or the eighties .
Note: This blog does not go into the details of the clues.
From an Epinions review:
The novel includes several stories, each intertwined throughout the book. The time period is unknown, although we get the impression that it’s in the mid 1900’s, which I conclude because you have cars, yet lack some more modern conveniences.
And, my favorite opinions, from a Barnes and Noble message board:
I also had a hard time figuring out the time frame. There were hints given along the way but I never noticed any confirmed dates. When the story was being told about Adeline and Emmeline, dressing gowns, coach houses and perambulators were some words used.
It does mention on page 380;
"Emerging from the trees, I approached the scene. A fire engine. Villagers with buckets,...watching the professionals do battle with the flames....An ambulance."
On page 382;
"The hospital. opening the ambulance doors...The stretcher, lifted onto a trolley and wheeled away at speed. The wheelchair."
These references didn't make it seem as old as I thought earlier.
--------------------------------------------------
As I was finishing the book, I realized there were no intrusions on the story from the "outside world" - no world events, no wars or revolutions, no discoveries mentioned. The passage of time is really only noted when "shifts" between stories occur. None of the characters really "age" gradually since each story Miss Winter tells Margaret is more of a snapshot separated by a number of years. The "twins" are babies, then school-age, then pre-teen, then teen, and last, in two cases, elderly. The realization made the isolation of the characters that much more profound. The only character given a relative age is Aurelius, who if I remember correctly is noted as being around 60. From there I extrapolated ages for the other characters: Miss Winter (75 to 80 since she was at least past age 13 and under 20 when Aurelius was born), Aurelius's sister Karen (40s - since their father was absent from Angelfield for around 15 years or so), and Margaret (late 30s or early 40s).
The sequences involving Charlie and Isabelle are pre-automobile (so 1890s to early 1900) but when Hester arrives there are automobiles mentioned (if I remember correctly) placing that part of the story near World War I (and Isabelle's death from influenza would occur before 1920). Margaret would enter the story in the 1960s (giving Aurelius time to grow up and Ambrose to join the military and return to Angelfield), allowing for the absence of computers (all the communication is done via letter) and lack of transportation in the more rural areas of England.
Just my thoughts.
-------------------------------------------------
I think the book is set at the turn of the 20C because of the descriptions of the dresses, furnishings etc. It has a 'Brideshead re-visited' feel to it (1915), especially the party where Isabelle met Roland. There is also a hint of the sumptuousness of furnishings in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). As the family were wealthy, a car could have been a family possesion at that time - Rolls Royce's were available in 1906.
--------------------------------------------------
Interesting point about the wealth of the family and the Rolls Royce being available in 1906. So, if Vida was 15 when she traveled by car to see the family's solicitor, add about 60 years to her age, because she is elderly when she tells her story to Margaret, and that would put the timeframe around 1966.
--------------------------------------------------
I am so fascinated to read the many and varied theories about the date of the stories, and also intrigued to see how much and how little the dating of a story matters to different readers.
I gave the timeframe question a lot of thought when I was writing the book, and it's one of the aspects that drew the most questions when I was touring bookshops recently in the US. For myself as a reader it does not distress me in the least not to know when a story is supposed to take place. Although I read plenty of books set in solidly recognisable historical contexts, I am equally happy and sometimes more so to read a novel that transcends reality and is set in some imaginary world (the magic realist tradition for instance). I often wonder whether any child in the history of reading has asked 'When was Cinderella set?' and it seems to me that as The Thirteenth Tale is a fairy tale for grown-ups, it is appropriate that it should be set in a place where time is not measured quite as it is for us.
Do any of you have any new ideas?
From a blog about all things Bronte:
It is never specified when the novel is set in a deliberate attempt to suspend the real world outside the novel. Nevertheless there are clues around the novel that more or less point to dates about the late seventies or the eighties .
Note: This blog does not go into the details of the clues.
From an Epinions review:
The novel includes several stories, each intertwined throughout the book. The time period is unknown, although we get the impression that it’s in the mid 1900’s, which I conclude because you have cars, yet lack some more modern conveniences.
And, my favorite opinions, from a Barnes and Noble message board:
I also had a hard time figuring out the time frame. There were hints given along the way but I never noticed any confirmed dates. When the story was being told about Adeline and Emmeline, dressing gowns, coach houses and perambulators were some words used.
It does mention on page 380;
"Emerging from the trees, I approached the scene. A fire engine. Villagers with buckets,...watching the professionals do battle with the flames....An ambulance."
On page 382;
"The hospital. opening the ambulance doors...The stretcher, lifted onto a trolley and wheeled away at speed. The wheelchair."
These references didn't make it seem as old as I thought earlier.
--------------------------------------------------
As I was finishing the book, I realized there were no intrusions on the story from the "outside world" - no world events, no wars or revolutions, no discoveries mentioned. The passage of time is really only noted when "shifts" between stories occur. None of the characters really "age" gradually since each story Miss Winter tells Margaret is more of a snapshot separated by a number of years. The "twins" are babies, then school-age, then pre-teen, then teen, and last, in two cases, elderly. The realization made the isolation of the characters that much more profound. The only character given a relative age is Aurelius, who if I remember correctly is noted as being around 60. From there I extrapolated ages for the other characters: Miss Winter (75 to 80 since she was at least past age 13 and under 20 when Aurelius was born), Aurelius's sister Karen (40s - since their father was absent from Angelfield for around 15 years or so), and Margaret (late 30s or early 40s).
The sequences involving Charlie and Isabelle are pre-automobile (so 1890s to early 1900) but when Hester arrives there are automobiles mentioned (if I remember correctly) placing that part of the story near World War I (and Isabelle's death from influenza would occur before 1920). Margaret would enter the story in the 1960s (giving Aurelius time to grow up and Ambrose to join the military and return to Angelfield), allowing for the absence of computers (all the communication is done via letter) and lack of transportation in the more rural areas of England.
Just my thoughts.
-------------------------------------------------
I think the book is set at the turn of the 20C because of the descriptions of the dresses, furnishings etc. It has a 'Brideshead re-visited' feel to it (1915), especially the party where Isabelle met Roland. There is also a hint of the sumptuousness of furnishings in The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890). As the family were wealthy, a car could have been a family possesion at that time - Rolls Royce's were available in 1906.
--------------------------------------------------
Interesting point about the wealth of the family and the Rolls Royce being available in 1906. So, if Vida was 15 when she traveled by car to see the family's solicitor, add about 60 years to her age, because she is elderly when she tells her story to Margaret, and that would put the timeframe around 1966.
--------------------------------------------------
I am so fascinated to read the many and varied theories about the date of the stories, and also intrigued to see how much and how little the dating of a story matters to different readers.
I gave the timeframe question a lot of thought when I was writing the book, and it's one of the aspects that drew the most questions when I was touring bookshops recently in the US. For myself as a reader it does not distress me in the least not to know when a story is supposed to take place. Although I read plenty of books set in solidly recognisable historical contexts, I am equally happy and sometimes more so to read a novel that transcends reality and is set in some imaginary world (the magic realist tradition for instance). I often wonder whether any child in the history of reading has asked 'When was Cinderella set?' and it seems to me that as The Thirteenth Tale is a fairy tale for grown-ups, it is appropriate that it should be set in a place where time is not measured quite as it is for us.
Do any of you have any new ideas?
Monday, July 9, 2007
This month's book pick
This month, we'll be reading "The Thirteenth Tale," by Diane Setterfield. It's another British book, but I promise that won't become a trend.
Join us at this month's meeting, scheduled for 7 p.m. July 26 at the Gwinnett County Public Library's Collins Hill branch.
Join us at this month's meeting, scheduled for 7 p.m. July 26 at the Gwinnett County Public Library's Collins Hill branch.
Thursday, June 21, 2007
Daily Post's Living Local series
As promised, here are the links to our series about trying to eat local for a week, in case anyone missed it in the paper. There's also a story about a Loganville couple who raises their own animals, vegetables, fruits and more in their backyard farm.
Local couple raises own food
Daily Post staff tries to eat local for one week
Shelley Mann's first-person account
Rachael Mason's first-person account
Anna Ferguson's first-person account
Local food sources in metro Atlanta
Local couple raises own food
Daily Post staff tries to eat local for one week
Shelley Mann's first-person account
Rachael Mason's first-person account
Anna Ferguson's first-person account
Local food sources in metro Atlanta
Saturday, June 2, 2007
June's book
Our book pick for June is "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life,"
by Barbara Kingsolver. It's a nonfiction account of the acclaimed author's
(she wrote "The Poisonwood Bible" and "The Bean Trees," among others)
attempts to eat off the land, eating only seasonal, local foods and things
her family grows for themselves.
Here's a link to the NPR broadcast interview that Eddie Suttles from the
library was telling us about at the meeting, in case anyone's interested in
checking it out:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9891473
Check back soon for a link to a story about the Gwinnett Daily Post
lifestyles staff's attempts to "eat local" for one week.
And join the Gwinnett Daily Post Book Club for our next meeting, at 7 p.m.
June 28 in the Gwinnett County Public Library's Collins Hill branch, as we
discuss "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle."
by Barbara Kingsolver. It's a nonfiction account of the acclaimed author's
(she wrote "The Poisonwood Bible" and "The Bean Trees," among others)
attempts to eat off the land, eating only seasonal, local foods and things
her family grows for themselves.
Here's a link to the NPR broadcast interview that Eddie Suttles from the
library was telling us about at the meeting, in case anyone's interested in
checking it out:
http://www.npr.org/templates
Check back soon for a link to a story about the Gwinnett Daily Post
lifestyles staff's attempts to "eat local" for one week.
And join the Gwinnett Daily Post Book Club for our next meeting, at 7 p.m.
June 28 in the Gwinnett County Public Library's Collins Hill branch, as we
discuss "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle."
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Next meeting
Please join us at our next book club meeting, where we will discuss Anna Maxted's book "A Tale of Two Sisters." The meeting starts at 7 p.m. May 31 at the Gwinnett County Public Library's Collins Hill branch.
Fiction or nonfiction?
Here's an interesting article from the New York Times regarding the accuracy of last month's book, "Kabul Beauty School."
April 29, 2007
Shades of Truth: An Account of a Kabul School Is Challenged
By ABBY ELLIN
BEAUTY salons have long held a certain mythology. In books and films, they are depicted as oases where women can laugh and cry, kibitzing under dryers while dishing on life and love. But sometimes it is not all “Steel Magnolias.”
The latest addition to the salon genre comes via Afghanistan, this time in memoir form: Deborah Rodriguez’s “Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil.” The book, released April 10 by Random House, is a story of a flame-haired, cigarette-smoking, multiply-divorced Michigan hairdresser who travels to Afghanistan, falls in love with the country, and returns later to set up a beauty school.
Along the way, she helps a bride fake her virginity on her wedding night; saves the school from a hostile governmental takeover; punches a man who fondles her in a marketplace; and marries a former mujahideen fighter.
The book has been widely praised, hitting No. 10 on the New York Times best-seller list this week and receiving a “six figure” deal from Columbia Pictures. Publishers Weekly noted the book’s “terrific opening chapter — colorful, suspenseful, funny.” People magazine called it “a dishy but substantial read.”
And it is all that. Ms. Rodriguez (with her co-author, Kristin Ohlson) portrays herself as a brazen, well-intentioned naïf who just wants to do good. The sort of woman who defiantly drives the streets of Kabul. The kind of person who marries a man she has known for 20 days, though they don’t speak the same language and he has a wife and seven children in Saudi Arabia.
She acknowledges her reputation at home in Michigan as “Crazy Deb.” “As in Crazy Deb with all the weird hairstyles and the long nails and the showgirl makeup,” she writes.
But Crazy Deb has raised the ire of six women who were involved at the founding of the Kabul Beauty School. The women say the book is filled with inaccuracies and inconsistencies. They argue that events did not unfold the way Ms. Rodriguez depicts them, and that she exaggerated her role in the formation of the school.
Though Random House notes on the copyright page that some personal, place and organization names have been changed, and some chronological details adjusted, the women believe that the discrepancies are too vast to call the book a memoir. They even question whether the stories Ms. Rodriguez tells about Afghan women — disturbing, heartbreaking tales of abuse — are real.
And they object to Ms. Rodriguez’s explanation of how she came to be in charge of the school, as she is today. They say that, instead of being its savior, as she represents, she plotted to move the school from the Women’s Ministry to the house she shares with her Afghan/Uzbek husband, Sher (called Sam in the book). And, they said, she did it for personal gain.
“She couldn’t have a for-profit business at the ministry,” said Patricia O’Connor, 42, one of the school’s founders.
Ms. Rodriguez has clearly not perpetrated anything as egregious as, say, James Frey, who fabricated chunks of his best-selling book, “A Million Little Pieces.” Yet the criticisms raise questions: How close to the truth must a memoir be?
Ms. Rodriguez adamantly defends her account. “This is my story,” she said.
Ms. Rodriguez and her critics agree on some basic facts, which were also established in a documentary, “The Beauty Academy of Kabul,” which chronicled the school’s first year: The idea came from Mary MacMakin, an American who had lived in Afghanistan for more than 25 years, who was the subject of a March 2001 Vogue article. Ms. MacMakin, now 78, suggested to Terri Grauel, the stylist on the photo shoot, that learning hairdressing and makeup techniques would help Afghan women gain financial independence and self-esteem.
Ms. Grauel enlisted the help of Ms. O’Connor, a beauty industry consultant, and together they rallied Vogue, Clairol, MAC Cosmetics and others, collecting mascaras, lipsticks, dyes and shampoos. Eventually, they hoped to take the program, which they called Beauty Without Borders, to women around the world.
With donations, they erected a building at the Afghan Women’s Ministry, an “oasis in the middle of chaos,” said Sheila McGurk, 54, the owner of a salon and spa in Alexandria, Va., and a teacher in the first group.
That is about when Ms. Rodriguez came into the picture. Arriving in Afghanistan in 2002, she determined that women in the post-Taliban era needed a place to congregate and feel beautiful: a school of their own. Soon, Ms. Rodriguez, back home with her husband, a traveling preacher, had a garage and storage unit worth of products donated by Paul Mitchell, she said in an interview Wednesday.
But when she learned about Beauty Without Borders, she called Ms. O’Connor and joined her group.
The first class started in August 2003, with 21 women and 6 rotating American volunteer teachers, including Ms. Rodriguez and three interpreters.
In November 2003, the students graduated and Ms. O’Connor and the others returned to the United States. The school was closed for winter. And that is when the alliance disintegrated.
According to Ms. O’Connor, she and the other women were back home desperately trying to raise cash.
But according to Ms. Rodriguez and Ms. MacMakin, the women’s minister was angry that the school was dormant too long while Ms. O’Connor was paid $5,000 a month.
Ms. O’Connor confirms that she was paid about $70,000 over two years, but said she contributed $40,000, and has the receipts to prove it.
Ms. Rodriguez writes only vaguely about these issues and never mentions Ms. O’Connor and some of the others, but she dramatically describes how she arrived back to resume her work at the school and found an eviction notice on the door and a gun at her back. To save the school, she wrote, she enlisted friends to help her sneak into the building to remove supplies and furniture. They moved them to a guesthouse she and her new husband had rented for $22,000.
Ms. O’Connor said there is no reason the Women’s Ministry would be unhappy. Further, she said, “If the Women’s Ministry wanted to run the school, why didn’t Debbie work with the Women’s Ministry?”
Ms. O’Connor said she was devastated, as were the others. Shaima Ali, 50, a Queens hairstylist who helped translate the school’s curriculum, said, “I left my home and business to do something good there and within three months everything was destroyed.”
Ms. McGurk said, “It makes Debbie out to be Mother Theresa. And it’s wrong.”
Calls and an e-mail message to the women’s minister, who is now governor of another region, went unanswered.
Still, there are other questions in Ms. Rodriguez’s book. For example, the opening chapter tells of “Roshanna,” a friend who had been raped and thus was no longer a virgin. Roshanna was terrified of her wedding night, when eager crowds await a bloody rag — the telltale sign of virginity.
Ms. Rodriguez sprung into action, whipping out nail clippers, cutting her finger, dripping blood on a handkerchief and instructing Roshanna to place it under a cushion. When the time came, she could swap it with another one. The next morning, she writes: “When I rush into the hallway, I see that Roshanna’s mother is wailing for joy. ‘Virgin!’ she shouts at me triumphantly, waving the handkerchief stained with my blood. ‘Virgin!’ ”
Sima Calkin, 51, an Afghan American living in Falls Church, Va., and former volunteer, questioned why Debbie, and not the mother, fixed the problem.
Ms. O’Connor said: “These women have been through gazillions of wars, and survived all sorts of unbelievable circumstances and this one thing they couldn’t handle?”
Roshanna figures in numerous scenes, but none of the women recalled ever having met anyone fitting her description. Ms. Rodriguez, when queried, said that while the Roshanna story was real, the details were not. The other women would not have known her, she explained, because she was a part of her “private life.”
The same applies to other women in the book. Jane von Mehren of Random House, the book’s editor, said the events were true, but they wanted to protect the women. “They can be stoned, thrown in jail, because of some of the things they did,” she said. “We in no way wanted to get them in trouble.”
When Ms. O’Connor, Ms. Grauel and Ms. McGurk first learned of the book they contacted Random House to voice their concern that the story be told accurately. Ms. Rodriguez does state in the book that Ms. Grauel “and some associates” had “galvanized the New York beauty industry to launch and support a school.” She also wrote: “I was actually relieved to find out that someone else with more clout and connections was working on the idea.”
But even many reviewers seem to have come away with the impression that Ms. Rodriguez was the founder. Typical is USA Today: “With contributions from hair-care companies and nonprofit groups, Rodriguez opened a salon and school where Afghan women could learn new skills.”
On April 12, NPR’s Diane Rehm conducted a live one-hour interview with Ms. Rodriguez, repeatedly referring to her as the school’s founder — until Ms. Calkin phoned in and asked Ms. Rodriguez why she hadn’t credited the other women. Ms. Rodriguez said later that she was inexperienced at doing interviews, which was why she didn’t contradict Ms. Rehm’s description of her.
Random House did not help the confusion, having sent out news releases describing Ms. Rodriguez as founder of the Kabul Beauty School. After being asked about it, Random House said the release was written before the manuscript arrived. The wording has since been changed to “runs.”
“There was no intention on the part of Random House to present Debbie as the founder of the school,” said Carol Schneider, a spokeswoman. “She wrote honestly about the school’s origins in the book and we as publishers have no reason to dissemble about that.”
Yet Ms. Rodriguez provides an incomplete history of the beauty school. In a memoir, was she obligated to do more?
Richard S. Pine, a literary agent and partner at InkWell Management LLC, in Manhattan, said she was not. “Journalists know about fact-checking,” he said. “Beauticians know about hair dye and shampoo.”
“It’s natural to expect that people with divergent backgrounds will approach telling their own story in very different ways,” he said.
One thing both camps agree on is that the real concern should be for Afghan women.
“There’s not a day that passes that I don’t think of those women and feel I deserted them,” Ms. McGurk said.
As for Ms. Rodriguez, after a 12-city book tour in the United States, she will return to Kabul and the beauty school, hair salon and coffeehouse she runs. She said some of the proceeds from the movie deal will go toward the school.
“I wanted the book to be about the women, not about me,” she said. “I’m just the voice.”
April 29, 2007
Shades of Truth: An Account of a Kabul School Is Challenged
By ABBY ELLIN
BEAUTY salons have long held a certain mythology. In books and films, they are depicted as oases where women can laugh and cry, kibitzing under dryers while dishing on life and love. But sometimes it is not all “Steel Magnolias.”
The latest addition to the salon genre comes via Afghanistan, this time in memoir form: Deborah Rodriguez’s “Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil.” The book, released April 10 by Random House, is a story of a flame-haired, cigarette-smoking, multiply-divorced Michigan hairdresser who travels to Afghanistan, falls in love with the country, and returns later to set up a beauty school.
Along the way, she helps a bride fake her virginity on her wedding night; saves the school from a hostile governmental takeover; punches a man who fondles her in a marketplace; and marries a former mujahideen fighter.
The book has been widely praised, hitting No. 10 on the New York Times best-seller list this week and receiving a “six figure” deal from Columbia Pictures. Publishers Weekly noted the book’s “terrific opening chapter — colorful, suspenseful, funny.” People magazine called it “a dishy but substantial read.”
And it is all that. Ms. Rodriguez (with her co-author, Kristin Ohlson) portrays herself as a brazen, well-intentioned naïf who just wants to do good. The sort of woman who defiantly drives the streets of Kabul. The kind of person who marries a man she has known for 20 days, though they don’t speak the same language and he has a wife and seven children in Saudi Arabia.
She acknowledges her reputation at home in Michigan as “Crazy Deb.” “As in Crazy Deb with all the weird hairstyles and the long nails and the showgirl makeup,” she writes.
But Crazy Deb has raised the ire of six women who were involved at the founding of the Kabul Beauty School. The women say the book is filled with inaccuracies and inconsistencies. They argue that events did not unfold the way Ms. Rodriguez depicts them, and that she exaggerated her role in the formation of the school.
Though Random House notes on the copyright page that some personal, place and organization names have been changed, and some chronological details adjusted, the women believe that the discrepancies are too vast to call the book a memoir. They even question whether the stories Ms. Rodriguez tells about Afghan women — disturbing, heartbreaking tales of abuse — are real.
And they object to Ms. Rodriguez’s explanation of how she came to be in charge of the school, as she is today. They say that, instead of being its savior, as she represents, she plotted to move the school from the Women’s Ministry to the house she shares with her Afghan/Uzbek husband, Sher (called Sam in the book). And, they said, she did it for personal gain.
“She couldn’t have a for-profit business at the ministry,” said Patricia O’Connor, 42, one of the school’s founders.
Ms. Rodriguez has clearly not perpetrated anything as egregious as, say, James Frey, who fabricated chunks of his best-selling book, “A Million Little Pieces.” Yet the criticisms raise questions: How close to the truth must a memoir be?
Ms. Rodriguez adamantly defends her account. “This is my story,” she said.
Ms. Rodriguez and her critics agree on some basic facts, which were also established in a documentary, “The Beauty Academy of Kabul,” which chronicled the school’s first year: The idea came from Mary MacMakin, an American who had lived in Afghanistan for more than 25 years, who was the subject of a March 2001 Vogue article. Ms. MacMakin, now 78, suggested to Terri Grauel, the stylist on the photo shoot, that learning hairdressing and makeup techniques would help Afghan women gain financial independence and self-esteem.
Ms. Grauel enlisted the help of Ms. O’Connor, a beauty industry consultant, and together they rallied Vogue, Clairol, MAC Cosmetics and others, collecting mascaras, lipsticks, dyes and shampoos. Eventually, they hoped to take the program, which they called Beauty Without Borders, to women around the world.
With donations, they erected a building at the Afghan Women’s Ministry, an “oasis in the middle of chaos,” said Sheila McGurk, 54, the owner of a salon and spa in Alexandria, Va., and a teacher in the first group.
That is about when Ms. Rodriguez came into the picture. Arriving in Afghanistan in 2002, she determined that women in the post-Taliban era needed a place to congregate and feel beautiful: a school of their own. Soon, Ms. Rodriguez, back home with her husband, a traveling preacher, had a garage and storage unit worth of products donated by Paul Mitchell, she said in an interview Wednesday.
But when she learned about Beauty Without Borders, she called Ms. O’Connor and joined her group.
The first class started in August 2003, with 21 women and 6 rotating American volunteer teachers, including Ms. Rodriguez and three interpreters.
In November 2003, the students graduated and Ms. O’Connor and the others returned to the United States. The school was closed for winter. And that is when the alliance disintegrated.
According to Ms. O’Connor, she and the other women were back home desperately trying to raise cash.
But according to Ms. Rodriguez and Ms. MacMakin, the women’s minister was angry that the school was dormant too long while Ms. O’Connor was paid $5,000 a month.
Ms. O’Connor confirms that she was paid about $70,000 over two years, but said she contributed $40,000, and has the receipts to prove it.
Ms. Rodriguez writes only vaguely about these issues and never mentions Ms. O’Connor and some of the others, but she dramatically describes how she arrived back to resume her work at the school and found an eviction notice on the door and a gun at her back. To save the school, she wrote, she enlisted friends to help her sneak into the building to remove supplies and furniture. They moved them to a guesthouse she and her new husband had rented for $22,000.
Ms. O’Connor said there is no reason the Women’s Ministry would be unhappy. Further, she said, “If the Women’s Ministry wanted to run the school, why didn’t Debbie work with the Women’s Ministry?”
Ms. O’Connor said she was devastated, as were the others. Shaima Ali, 50, a Queens hairstylist who helped translate the school’s curriculum, said, “I left my home and business to do something good there and within three months everything was destroyed.”
Ms. McGurk said, “It makes Debbie out to be Mother Theresa. And it’s wrong.”
Calls and an e-mail message to the women’s minister, who is now governor of another region, went unanswered.
Still, there are other questions in Ms. Rodriguez’s book. For example, the opening chapter tells of “Roshanna,” a friend who had been raped and thus was no longer a virgin. Roshanna was terrified of her wedding night, when eager crowds await a bloody rag — the telltale sign of virginity.
Ms. Rodriguez sprung into action, whipping out nail clippers, cutting her finger, dripping blood on a handkerchief and instructing Roshanna to place it under a cushion. When the time came, she could swap it with another one. The next morning, she writes: “When I rush into the hallway, I see that Roshanna’s mother is wailing for joy. ‘Virgin!’ she shouts at me triumphantly, waving the handkerchief stained with my blood. ‘Virgin!’ ”
Sima Calkin, 51, an Afghan American living in Falls Church, Va., and former volunteer, questioned why Debbie, and not the mother, fixed the problem.
Ms. O’Connor said: “These women have been through gazillions of wars, and survived all sorts of unbelievable circumstances and this one thing they couldn’t handle?”
Roshanna figures in numerous scenes, but none of the women recalled ever having met anyone fitting her description. Ms. Rodriguez, when queried, said that while the Roshanna story was real, the details were not. The other women would not have known her, she explained, because she was a part of her “private life.”
The same applies to other women in the book. Jane von Mehren of Random House, the book’s editor, said the events were true, but they wanted to protect the women. “They can be stoned, thrown in jail, because of some of the things they did,” she said. “We in no way wanted to get them in trouble.”
When Ms. O’Connor, Ms. Grauel and Ms. McGurk first learned of the book they contacted Random House to voice their concern that the story be told accurately. Ms. Rodriguez does state in the book that Ms. Grauel “and some associates” had “galvanized the New York beauty industry to launch and support a school.” She also wrote: “I was actually relieved to find out that someone else with more clout and connections was working on the idea.”
But even many reviewers seem to have come away with the impression that Ms. Rodriguez was the founder. Typical is USA Today: “With contributions from hair-care companies and nonprofit groups, Rodriguez opened a salon and school where Afghan women could learn new skills.”
On April 12, NPR’s Diane Rehm conducted a live one-hour interview with Ms. Rodriguez, repeatedly referring to her as the school’s founder — until Ms. Calkin phoned in and asked Ms. Rodriguez why she hadn’t credited the other women. Ms. Rodriguez said later that she was inexperienced at doing interviews, which was why she didn’t contradict Ms. Rehm’s description of her.
Random House did not help the confusion, having sent out news releases describing Ms. Rodriguez as founder of the Kabul Beauty School. After being asked about it, Random House said the release was written before the manuscript arrived. The wording has since been changed to “runs.”
“There was no intention on the part of Random House to present Debbie as the founder of the school,” said Carol Schneider, a spokeswoman. “She wrote honestly about the school’s origins in the book and we as publishers have no reason to dissemble about that.”
Yet Ms. Rodriguez provides an incomplete history of the beauty school. In a memoir, was she obligated to do more?
Richard S. Pine, a literary agent and partner at InkWell Management LLC, in Manhattan, said she was not. “Journalists know about fact-checking,” he said. “Beauticians know about hair dye and shampoo.”
“It’s natural to expect that people with divergent backgrounds will approach telling their own story in very different ways,” he said.
One thing both camps agree on is that the real concern should be for Afghan women.
“There’s not a day that passes that I don’t think of those women and feel I deserted them,” Ms. McGurk said.
As for Ms. Rodriguez, after a 12-city book tour in the United States, she will return to Kabul and the beauty school, hair salon and coffeehouse she runs. She said some of the proceeds from the movie deal will go toward the school.
“I wanted the book to be about the women, not about me,” she said. “I’m just the voice.”
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