Eat, Pray, Love

Eat, Pray, Love is the true story of the experiences of Liz Gilbert and her journey far from home in pursuit of pleasure, devotion, and balance. After a messy, heartbreaking divorce, Liz makes the momentous decision to put her “real life” on hold and spend a year traveling. But she doesn’t go circling the globe willy-nilly. She chooses three specific locations where she will live for four months each. In Italy Liz eats with wild abandon and goes to school to learn Italian. She meets many colorful characters while living on her own in an apartment in Rome. Liz moves on to India, where she lives in an ashram, a religious retreat and place of meditation. Even though Liz has a few visions of her guru’s master teacher (he’s deceased), the person who helps her the most while in India is an outspoken older man from Texas named Richard. After the soaking up the pleasure of great food and good company in Italy and finding a personal connection to God in India, Liz sets out for Indonesia. Unlike her previous two trips, which were carefully planned, Liz has no idea what she is going to do in Bali. She goes there in solely in hopes of finding an elderly medicine man whom she met two years previously. Liz succeeds in finding the weird and wonderful healer, and they strike a bargain. He will teach her meditation techniques and she will teach him English. Rather than lessons, however, a friendship begins. Of all the friends Liz makes during her travels, she becomes the most involved with Wayan and Felipe, a Balinese single mother who makes her living as a healer and a Brazilian exporter. In Bali Liz puts all the lessons she has learned to the test, trying to find the balance between worldly pleasures and spiritual devotion.

When reading for pleasure, I don’t usually choose non-fiction. But I saw the trailer for the movie a few months ago and said to myself, “Oh! Is that what that book’s about? That sounds really interesting!” So I went to my much used local library’s website and looked up the summary for Eat, Pray, Love, and sure enough the summary of the book sounded a lot like the trailer for the movie. I quickly requested the book. There was quite a waiting list of course, what with the movie coming out and all. I finally did get a hold of the book though, and I finished that wearisome young adult novel I was reading. I was very pleasantly surprised when I began this book. Elizabeth Gilbert writes like I think. First and foremost that’s what caught my attention, the flow of thought. Then I noted that she too seems to be a hopeless worrier. Oh boy, can I identify with that! So I felt a connection to this memoir from the get go, and then I got interested in the story. The book has 108 chapters, some long some short, and it is written in three “books,” one for each location. My favorite section was “Book 1” or the Italy section. Being the first section it has a lot of the “meat” of the story. The reader finds out a lot about Elizabeth Gilbert and how she arrived at this point in her life. It’s fast paced and very interesting. There is also an appeal for me in the idea of traipsing around Italy, ignoring the urge to sight-see at a breakneck speed, eating as much marvelous food as one wants and meeting all sorts of interesting people. While I was really interested in learning about the process of meditation and the inner workings of an Indian ashram, the India section dragged a little for me. The author was meditating and praying for a huge part of each day, so there’s a reason why there isn’t much action in this section. She spends a lot of time explaining things that aren’t directly related to her story in this part of the book, and that made this section the hardest for me to read. Things picked up in Bali with the introduction of the two healers though. Wayan and Ketut Liyer are so fun to read about, so full of life and laughter! I was glad the book ended on a positive note. It seemed the author found what she was looking for and accomplished what she set out to do. Happy endings are always appreciated, especially in non-fiction! This memoir might be of interest to people who like the idea of roaming the world. It’s also a great firsthand account of three cultures that are very different from America written by someone who lived there, not just brief visitor. I wouldn’t recommend this book to just anyone, but if you are the kind of person who lives a lot of life tangled up in the thoughts in your head (as I do!) you too might identify with Liz, and you just might really like this book!