Descriptive Narration of the Author

[Ben]

Gey’s twenty-one-year-old assistant, Mary Kubicek, sat eating a tuna-salad sandwich at a long stone culture bench that doubled as a break table. She and Margaret and the other women in the Gey lab spent countless hours there, all in nearly identical cat-eye-glasses with fat dark frames and thick lenses, their hair pulled back in tight buns.

I'm wondering if the details wrote by Rebecca Skloot are true. Like, did Mary really "sat eating a tuna-salad sandwich at a long stone culture bench"?

I know it sounds nonsensical but can anyone confirm this?

[Carol]

butter be scotch wrote: "Gey’s twenty-one-year-old assistant, Mary Kubicek, sat eating a tuna-salad sandwich at a long stone culture bench that doubled as a break table. She and Margaret and the other women in the Gey lab ..."

Is your question about the tuna salad sandwich or eating at the culture bench? I don't know about the sandwich, but I don't doubt that she was eating in the lab. Years ago, it was not unusual to eat in labs, even store food in the refrigerators with specimens! Nowadays, we wouldn't think of doing that! :)

[Ben]

Carol wrote: "butter be scotch wrote: "Gey’s twenty-one-year-old assistant, Mary Kubicek, sat eating a tuna-salad sandwich at a long stone culture bench that doubled as a break table. She and Margaret and the ot..."

I guess both. I'm confused if the author just made that up or did she really asked Mary what she ate that day.

I think its quite cool eating in a laboratory :]

[Andrew]

butter be scotch wrote: "Gey’s twenty-one-year-old assistant, Mary Kubicek, sat eating a tuna-salad sandwich at a long stone culture bench that doubled as a break table. She and Margaret and the other women in the Gey lab ..."

you should go to the Rebecca Skloot website where Mary Kubicek is recorded as saying this. Not that it's an important point to raise about the book, i.e who cares?

[Liza]

I would think the physical descriptions are based on pictures and interviews as pointed earlier.

Also, all Skloot had to do was ask what an average day at the lab was like, so she could recreate a moment like this.

The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair that Changed America does the same thing and the author has an epilogue of sorts where he explains how he was able to guess those tiny narrative details based upon painstaking research and consultations with psychologists. It would stand to reason that Skloot did something similar, which wouldn't make her account false.