Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia | Elizabeth Gilbert | Should've followed my instincts!

books:

Eat, Pray, Love: O...

	Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia Elizabeth Gilbert Penguin (Non-Classics), 2007 - 352 pages average customer review:based on 1533 reviews view larger image
	for more information click here

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.

for more information click here

Great Summer Read!

I loved this book! It's written like your sitting and chatting with an old friend. Easy, comfortable and interesting. You feel like you know the people and care about what happens to them. I loved the part about her riding her bike past the monkey and what she said! Hysterical!!!

The places the author talks about are very seldom seem by the average person, making it all the more interesting! What a wonderful adventure that most of us can only dream of. Great Summer Book!!! (I can't wait for the continuing story, due out next year!)

Should've followed my instincts!

This book has gotten a lot of hype and prominent bookstore placement...based not on good writing but likely a great publicist. Here's a narrator you can't even trust, let alone tolerate. Her skimpiness on the details for her ruined marriage gives readers the impression that the truth is being hidden from them in order to shape their impressions of her. Most likely this is the case because she fears readers might think for themselves instead of just listening to her side of things. Strike 1.

She's also an unreliable narrator because her circumstances are so uncommon to what most people experience in a divorce. It's rare for anybody to be able to flit off around the world with a wad of money when they feel that life has become too difficult. No, most of us experience tragedy (tragedy we have not caused, unlike Gilbert), and we have to muddle through. She doesn't acknowledge this or approach her writing with any recognition that yes, there are worse things in life than the problems she creates for herself. Strike 2.

I couldn't even finish this book, though I really tried. I can't immerse myself in a book where the narrator is so jarringly set on focusing you on herself. And the view is not great, it's irritating. The impression I get of her is that she is overwhelmingly, unshakably amused by herself. She's like a spoiled child who has been doted on and therefore expects others to automatically love her and agree with her skewed self-pity. "Don't you HATE that I had to give up my Manhattan apartment and my nice big house in the suburbs??" Strike 3.

Her "insights" about God and spirituality are shallow and depend on things that make her feel warm and fuzzy. I read The Diving Bell and The Butterfly while trying to read Eat Pray Love...the books are like night and day. Someone with no real problems going all to pieces, and someone who has lost everything and remains optimistic. I think I'll learn my lessons from Diving Bell!

for more information click here