A reader who wants to like the book Kabul Beauty School … doesn’t.
I’m a big reader. Always have been. While my friends were at the playground during recess, I was holed up in a corner with my nose buried in the latest Cam Jansen (remember those?).
I’m currently reading Kabul Beauty School. It’s a true story about an American woman who travels to Afghanistan to open a beauty school to help impoverished women with dreams of becoming beauticians.
It’s got a bit of an Eat, Pray, Love vibe to it: woman goes through mid-life crisis, woman makes major life decision, woman learns about herself and another culture during said major life decision. And as an Eat, Pray, Love lover, I was loving this book.
Until I began to despise the woman who wrote it.
Unlike Elizabeth Gilbert, who had nothing keeping her from escaping her life, Deborah Rodriguez had children. Young children who needed their mother, a mother who fled from her problems to one of the most dangerous countries in the world at the time. That’s not a mother; that’s a selfish woman.
I realized my feelings for the author midway through reading the book, and I’d be lying if I said it didn’t affect how I felt about the book. As a literary journalism major, I value the words of authors who lived through their writing and felt that their story had to be told. And as much as I love the story and its message, I don’t love the book. And I blame Debbie.
Are there any authors that you dislike?
FYI: My young children were not so young when i went to Afghanistan. They were 18 and 21 and in college.