Eat Pray Love
One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
by Elizabeth Gilbert
Overview
From the Publisher
This beautifully written, heartfelt memoir touched a nerve among both readers and reviewers. Elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made the difficult choice to leave behind all the trappings of modern American success (marriage, house in the country, career) and find, instead, what she truly wanted from life. Setting out for a year to study three different aspects of her nature amid three different cultures, Gilbert explored the art of pleasure in Italy and the art of devotion in India, and then a balance between the two on the Indonesian island of Bali. By turns rapturous and rueful, this wise and funny author (whom Booklist calls “Anne Lamott’s hip, yoga- practicing, footloose younger sister”) is poised to garner yet more adoring fans.
My thoughts
Had I know before I started that this is an Oprah book, I never would have started it. I'm simply not fond of Oprah books. However I was unaware of it and received the book as a gift, and moved it to the front of my reading list because I thought it sounded so good.
I know there are mixed reviews on this book, from those who say it was life-changing to those who couldn't relate to a single word. I found it to be entertaining and thought-provoking even when I didn't agree with the author's message.
I guess I'm a little embarrassed for the author that she wrote about her own suffering so openly. Thankfully I don't know anyone who cries as much as she does on the bathroom floor. Just when I'd have enough of the humiliation that was her life, she'd write something clever and funny and I'd be glued to the book for a few more pages. I honestly didn't know what kind of review I'd give this book until I finished it, and in the end I gave it three stars.
Almost everyone agrees that the section on Eat is great fun! Who wouldn't want to eat their way out of depression in Italy of all places?! I want some of that pizza she ate! I enjoyed the section on Pray and I liked the character she met in India called Richard from Texas. He saved that section of the book, bailing her out when her whining about meditation became drawn out and the epiphany - come on, you knew it was coming - finally arrived. And I even liked the section on Love although I thought it was the most peculiar of the three chapters. I liked the characters she met along the way - could have done without the part on masturbation. For heaven's sake Elizabeth, keep some of that most personal stuff to yourself.
Overall, I had a lot of laughs. When I didn't agree with her philosophy, I didn't really care. Every so often I thought she hit the nail on the head with her clever and humorous writing skills. It wasn't life changing for me but it was fun.
TWO Favorite Passages!
Still, despite all this, traveling is the great true love of my life. I have always felt, ever since I was sixteen years old and first went to Russia with my saved-up babysitting money, that to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice. I am loyal and constant in my love for travel, as I have not always been loyal and constant in my other loves. I feel about travel the way a happy new mother feels about her impossible, colicky, restless newborn baby - I just don't care what it puts me through. Because I adore it. Because it's mine. Because it looks exactly like me. It can barf all over me if it wants to - I just don't care.
And ...
So Sofie and I have come to Pizzeria da Michele, and these pies we have just ordered - one for each of us - are making us lose our minds. I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost an affair. Meanwhile, Sofie is practically in tears over hers, she's having a metaphysical crisis about it, and she's begging me, "Why do they even bother trying to make pizza in Stockholm? Why do we even bother eating food at all in Stockholm?"
