| Synopsis 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.
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Gilbert (The Last American Man)
grafts the structure of romantic fiction upon the inquiries of
reporting in this sprawling yet methodical travelogue of soul-searching
and self-discovery. Plagued with despair after a nasty divorce, the
author, in her early 30s, divides a year equally among three dissimilar
countries, exploring her competing urges for earthly delights and
divine transcendence. First, pleasure: savoring Italy's buffet of
delights--the world's best pizza, free-flowing wine and dashing
conversation partners--Gilbert consumes la dolce vita as
spiritual succor. "I came to Italy pinched and thin," she writes, but
soon fills out in waist and soul. Then, prayer and ascetic rigor:
seeking communion with the divine at a sacred ashram in India, Gilbert
emulates the ways of yogis in grueling hours of meditation, struggling
to still her churning mind. Finally, a balancing act in Bali, where
Gilbert tries for equipoise "betwixt and between" realms, studies with
a merry medicine man and plunges into a charged love affair. Sustaining
a chatty, conspiratorial tone, Gilbert fully engages readers in the
year's cultural and emotional tapestry--conveying rapture with
infectious brio, recalling anguish with touching candor--as she details
her exotic tableau with history, anecdote and impression.
Copyright Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From The New Yorker
At the age of thirty-one, Gilbert moved with her husband to the suburbs
of New York and began trying to get pregnant, only to realize that she
wanted neither a child nor a husband. Three years later, after a
protracted divorce, she embarked on a yearlong trip of recovery, with
three main stops: Rome, for pleasure (mostly gustatory, with a special
emphasis on gelato); an ashram outside of Mumbai, for spiritual
searching; and Bali, for "balancing." These destinations are all on the
beaten track, but Gilbert's exuberance and her self-deprecating humor
enliven the proceedings: recalling the first time she attempted to
speak directly to God, she says, "It was all I could do to stop myself
from saying, 'I've always been a big fan of your work.'"
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker
From The Washington Post's Book World/washingtonpost.com
The only thing wrong with this readable, funny memoir of a magazine
writer's yearlong travels across the world in search of pleasure and
balance is that it seems so much like a Jennifer Aniston movie. Like
Jen, Liz is a plucky blond American woman in her thirties with no
children and no major money worries. As the book opens, she is going
through a really bad divorce and subsequent stormy rebound love affair.
Awash in tears in the middle of the night on the floor of the bathroom,
she begins to pray for guidance, "you know -- like, to God." God
answers. He tells her to go back to bed. I started seeing the Star
headlines: "Jen's New Faith!" "What Really Happened at the Ashram!"
"Jen's Brazilian Sugar Daddy -- Exclusive Photos!" Please understand
that Gilbert, whose earlier nonfiction book, The Last American Man,
portrayed a contemporary frontiersman, is serious about her quest. But
because she never leaves her self-deprecating humor at home, her
journey out of depression and toward belief lacks a certain gravitas.
The book is composed of 108 short chapters (based on the beads in a
traditional Indian japa mala prayer necklace) that often come across as
scenes in a movie. And however sad she feels or however deeply she
experiences something, she can't seem to avoid dressing up her feelings
in prose that can get too cute and too trite. On the other hand, she
convinced me that she acquired more wisdom than most young American
seekers -- and did it without peyote buttons or other classic hippie
medicines. When Gilbert determines that she requires a year of healing,
her first stop is Italy, because she feels she needs to immerse herself
in a language and culture that worships pleasure and beauty. This sets
the stage for a "Jen's Romp in Rome," where she studies Italian and,
with newfound friends, searches for the best pizza in the world. It's a
considerable achievement because she is still stalked by Depression and
Loneliness, which she casts as "Pinkerton Detectives" -- Depression,
the wise guy, and Loneliness, "the more sensitive cop." They frisk her,
"empty my pockets of any joy I had been carrying" and relentlessly
interrogate her about why she thinks she deserves a vacation,
considering what a mess she's made of her life. After literally eating
herself out of depression, she returns to the United States for
Christmas holidays. Next stop: the ashram. It seems Gilbert has been a
student of yoga and meditation for years. Her rural Indian experience
features Gilbert grappling mightily with some of the meditative
practices. She finds quirky co-practitioners such as Richard from
Texas, a former truck driver, alcoholic and Birkenstock dealer. Richard
nicknames her "Groceries" because of her appetite at meals and offers
wise advice. Picture Willie Nelson in a non-singing cameo role. Gilbert
acknowledges that Americans have had difficulty accepting the idea of
meditation and gurus, and she does a mostly fine job in making her
ashram education accessible. She deftly sketches the physical stress of
sitting in one position for hours, as well as the metaphysical stress
of staying on message. Still, Gilbert sounds like a giddy teenager as
she describes her relationship with Swamiji, the yogi who founded the
ashram where she is studying: "I'm finding that all I want is Swamiji.
All I feel is Swamiji.... It's the Swamiji channel, round the clock."
The concluding 36 beads find Gilbert in Bali, palling around with an
ageless medicine man who looks like Yoda, a Balinese mother and nurse,
Wayan, who is a refugee from domestic violence, and other colorful
characters. Gilbert is healed enough by now to render a really good
deed: She raises $18,000 via e-mail from American friends for Wayan to
buy a house. ("Jen: Bigger Do-Gooder Than Brad?") And after 18 months
of self-imposed celibacy, she finds mature, truer love thanks to a
charming older Brazilian businessman. Eat, Pray, Love as a whole
actually is better than its 108 beads. By the time she and her lover
sailed into a Bali sunset, Gilbert had won me over. She's a gutsy gal,
this Liz, flaunting her psychic wounds and her search for faith in a
pop-culture world, and her openness ultimately rises above its glib
moments. Memo to Jen -- option this book. -- Grace Lichtenstein is a
travel writer and author of six books who lives in New York and Santa
Fe, N.M.
Reviewed by Grace Lichtenstein
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
It's easy to envy Elizabeth Gilbert: she has had a run of successful,
critically lauded books (National Book Award finalist for The Last American Man; Pushcart Prize winner for Pilgrims) and has sustained a successful career as a journalist for Spin and GQ. Her "trademark conversational" prose (Atlanta Journal-Constitution)
is on display in her first memoir-cum-travelogue, yet not all reviewers
are pleasantly engaged. They agree that the 108 chapters of the book
(the same number of Buddhist prayer beads on a japa mala) are
filled with interesting characters and vivid descriptions. But some
critics feel Gilbert's likability and humor obscure the deeper themes
of her search for enlightenment.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
From AudioFile
Elizabeth Gilbert was a 30-year-old successful journalist with a
perfect life (husband, fancy New York City apartment, fabulous weekend
home) when she realized she was miserable. After surviving an
acrimonious divorce, Gilbert sold her remaining possessions to spend a
year abroad--four months each in three countries with nothing in common
except starting with the letter "I." The author's reading of this
memoir adds depth; she's obviously not a professional narrator, but her
vocal presence provides vivid color and quirky humor as she eats (in
Italy), prays (in India), and finds love (in Indonesia). This is a
delightful memoir that explores exotic countries as well as the
author's heart and soul. N.M.C. © AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Gilbert, author of The Last American Man (2002)
and a well-traveled I'll-try-anything-once journalist, chronicles her
intrepid quest for spiritual healing. Driven to despair by a punishing
divorce and an anguished love affair, Gilbert flees New York for
sojourns in the three Is. She goes to Italy to learn the
language and revel in the cuisine, India to meditate in an ashram, and
Indonesia to reconnect with a healer in Bali. This itinerary may sound
self-indulgent or fey, but there is never a whiny or pious or dull
moment because Gilbert is irreverent, hilarious, zestful, courageous,
intelligent, and in masterful command of her sparkling prose. A
captivating storyteller with a gift for enlivening metaphors, Gilbert
is Anne Lamott's hip, yoga-practicing, footloose younger sister, and
readers will laugh and cry as she recounts her nervy and outlandish
experiences and profiles the extraordinary people she meets. As Gilbert
switches from gelato to kundalini Shakti to herbal cures
Balinese-style, she ponders the many paths to divinity, the true nature
of happiness, and the boon of good-hearted, sexy love. Gilbert's
sensuous and audacious spiritual odyssey is as deeply pleasurable as it
is enlightening. Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Anne Lamott
This is a wonderful book, brilliant and personal, rich in spiritual insight.
The New York Times Book Review
Gilbert’s prose is fueled by a mix of intelligence, wit and colloquial exuberance that is close to irresistible.
Time
An engaging, intelligent, and highly entertaining memoir.
Los Angeles Times
A meditation on love in its many forms—love of food, language, humanity, God, and most meaningful for Gilbert, love of self.
Entertainment Weekly
This insightful, funny account of her travels reads like a mix of Susan Orlean and Frances Mayes.
About the Author
While Elizabeth Gilbert's roots are in journalism -- she's a
Pushcart Prize-winning and National Magazine Award-nominated writer --
it's her books that have granted her even more attention. Gilbert departed from reporting in 1997, with the publication of her first collection of short fiction, Pilgrims. A finalist for the 1998 PEN/Hemingway Award, Pilgrims was also selected as a New York Times Notable Book, was listed as one of the "Most Intriguing Books of 1997" by Glamour magazine, and went on to win best first fiction awards from The Paris Review, The Southern Review, and Ploughshares.
Since then, Gilbert has successfully alternated between fiction and
nonfiction -- a high-wire act that has paid off in a string of
critically acclaimed bestsellers that includes her first full-length
novel, Stern Men (2000); The Last American Man (2002), a National Book Award for Nonfiction; and Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia (2006), a celebrated spiritual memoir that landed on several year-end Best Books lists.
Product Details Paperback: 352 pages
Carton Size: 36 books
Publisher: Penguin (February 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0143038419
ISBN-13: 978-0143038412
Product Dimensions: 8.46 x 5.56 x 0.78 inches
Shipping Weight: 0.64 pounds |
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