44 Reviews

Return to Blog Home
June 10th, 2021 at 3:07pm

I get it.

No more than ten pages into Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love (the title is written interchangeably with commas and without), I understood why the book was a bestseller in 2006, and then, in 2010, produced as a movie starring Julia Roberts.

Background on this series is here.

It rests on a powerful formula in contemporary Western art: women pushing back against "supposed to" and "should." As in, women are supposed to look a certain way. They should have kids by a given age. They're supposed to be happy with X, Y, and Z. And so on.

As the reader, it's easy to feel proud of her, even when, on her last night in India, she makes out with a tree.

When they finally throw up their hands and call bullshit—on themselves, on men, on society, on the absurdity of life—it creates a special kind of catharsis, and, as long as it's done right, that emotional and psychological unfolding is catnip.

There's more to Eat Pray Love, of course.

"I have always felt," Gilbert says, "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." And so she goes to Italy, India, and Bali, learning languages, visiting towns, meditating, and making friends.

In so many ways, it's a lovely travel memoir. But the reason you heard of it in 2006 or 2010? The catnip.

Gilbert loves to look at Roman men, but she doesn't touch them.

An Imposition of Form

The introduction is entitled, How This Book Works, or the 109th Bead.

A japamala, or string of prayer beads used in many faiths, is 108 beads long, and each (usually brief) chapter of Eat Pray Love represents a bead. Since Gilbert visits three countries, each segment of her trip has 36 chapters.

This structure provides a metaphorical framework for the protagonist's journey along a spiritual path, but also provides objective Cartesian order to the messier, subjective content.

And It Opens with a Mess

From the first sentence ("I wish Giovanni would kiss me"), the reader plunges into the protagonist's turbulent world, one requiring time and space to heal through food, prayer, and abstinence.

If Gilbert doesn't have the immediate attention of every woman age thirty and up after this paragraph, she's never going to. It's a clarion call, a howitzer shot from the top of a hill, a set of flares, a bonfire, and, why the hell not, a box of sparklers.

Life has punched me in the gut, the modern world can be awful, and I haven't helped matters. I'm a wreck, so I'm going to step back, do some traveling, and try to get my head right.

In its simplest form, that's Eat Pray Love.

The Eat Part

Gilbert goes to Rome to learn Italian and to eat. In fact, she eats so much that she has to buy new clothes. She also flirts with handsome men, watches soccer, and befriends a man named, yes, Luca Spaghetti.

She spends time alone and reads frequently. She performs not insignificant acts of kindness.

She travels, too: Florence, Bologna, Venice, Naples. She's particularly fond of Sicily: its historical importance, its people, and its cuisine. At one point, she asks "a sleepy policeman" in Taormina where the best food in town is. "He gives me one of the greatest things anyone can ever give me in life—a tiny piece of paper with the name of an obscure restaurant written on it, ...[and] a hand-drawn map."

For most of the section in Italy, though, Gilbert dissects. She looks back on her relationships. She explains the quirks of life in Rome. She acknowledges her struggles with the language. She ponders the question of having children—or, in her case, not having them.

Gilbert eats her way through Italy, and you're happy for her.

She's calm and happy in Bali.

Gilbert writes in a clear, commonsensical way. Her tone is neither academic, nor intellectual, nor elevated; it's transparent and conversational with the occasional lovely turn of phrase. The emotional inventory performed in such a tone of voice, delivered via short chapters which allow readers to reset and breathe, resonates as genuine and confiding.

The Pray Part

Gilbert goes almost immediately to India after her four months in Italy, shifting her focus from the physical to the spiritual.

We learn about her guru and the ashram where she stays, a friend named "Richard from Texas," her thoughts about God, and her struggles with the mind, meditation, and a chant called the Gurugita.

Sensual Italy, spiritual India. Blended Indonesia?

She is far better acquainted with Eastern spirituality and practice than the average Westerner, and she relays some of that knowledge to the reader. Many of the passages, spiritual and esoteric, bordering on the intellectual, recall Janwillem Van de Wetering's The Empty Mirror and A Glimpse of Nothingness.

Gilbert also describes an intensely spiritual experience where she connects with, well...God's energy. Such an event is inadequately served by everyday, non-lyrical language—the main tool in Gilbert's linguistic arsenal—which explains why the passage feels superficial.

To any man hesitant to read this book: don't be. You'll learn something.

Another disappointment of this section is that we don't learn as much about India as we do of Italy (and, later, Bali). The sense of place, understandably, centers around the ashram more so than the host country.

Despite those two minor issues, Gilbert is, at the end of her stay in India, happier and healthier than ever before. It's easy to feel proud of her, even when, on her last night in India, she makes out with a tree. "I kissed that tree with all my heart," she admits.

The Love Part

Sensual Italy, spiritual India.

Blended Indonesia?

Would Gilbert's time in Bali emerge as a synthesis of her two previous stays? Physical and sensual without being hedonistic, and...emotionally and psychologically healthy, perhaps with less meditation?

Yep. Exactly that.

Gilbert is more spiritually mature in Bali. She regularly visits a medicine man named Ketut Liyer, helping him with English and listening to his teachings. She spends time alone and reads frequently. She performs not insignificant acts of kindness.

And she falls in love with a Brazilian man named Felipe, but it takes time. She doesn't rush in. Once they finally do become a couple, they go for a trip to the small island of Gili Meno and the book ends.

Very Well Done

So much about Eat Pray Love is just right. The concept, execution, pacing, tone, and resolution—healed, contented heroine gets the good man—all hit the mark.

From the first sentence, the reader plunges into the protagonist's turbulent world, one requiring time and space to heal through food, prayer—and abstinence.

Some readers may find it too emotional, too open, too inquiring, but Eat Pray Love is an enjoyable read using travel as the vehicle for healing, growth, and the stress-eating of pizza.

Click here to list the 44 Reviews which have already been published.