Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
Book Review: a wise and funny read
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a really great book about a woman who spends a year, following her divorce, travelling to 'find herself', but hold the groan, it's not as New Age-y as that sounds. Saying that, like the other reviewers, I couldn't get into the India ashram section (even though India is one of my favourite places in the world and I'm usually thrilled to read about it), but the Italy and Indonesia sections (especially the Italy section) are DIVINE. I found her writing honest, very witty, observant and very funny, as in laugh-out-loud funny, which is saying a lot. Reading about her coming out of difficult relationships and going to Italy 'to eat' is pretty fabulous. She does indeed nourish her soul, and then - skimming over the India bit as I found myself doing - she gets to Bali and finds love, which was also pretty fabulous. Book Review: A fresh funny voice....
Summary: 4 Stars
This is extraordinary. It is witty, very clever, and touches profondity at moments.....
I cannot give it 5 stars, but happily give it 4, because one must keep reading it, and one does feel, by the end, that one has taken a trip around the world, in very entertaining company indeed. Liz Gilbert is a kind of New Age Brigid Jones, mixed with Woody Allen, Ruby Wax and Joan Rivers. This is American wit at its sharpest and funniest.
Whether you buy her "meeting with God" is up to you, I could have done with editing out the somewhat cringe-making religious conversions, though it must be said she always has a sense of humour when writing about herself. I agree with the other critic who said one could skip the middle section on an ashram, although she does meet a couple of very funny characters.
It is in the large cast of characters that Ms. Gilbert excells, they come alive, you know she could not have invented the stuff they say, and the two descriptions of Balinese healers, one ancient man, one youngish woman, are more than worth the price of the book.
I would recommend this book to almost anyone, but especially those who have travelled in Bali and India (and Italy, I suppose....) and are more interested in REALLY seeing a country and meeting its people. This Elizabeth Gilbert does, and with such refreshing honesty and wit, that you feel YOU have met them.
She really is a very talented writer.
Book Review: Funny, clever, facinating and a must for travellers
Summary: 5 Stars
The title says it all - Liz Gilbert has the wonderful talent of making you feel like you are walking in her shoes. Her descriptions of the food in Italy made my mouth water. Unlike some other readers it was the early part about the divorce I could have skipped - I found all the rest of the book wonderful including India. I had no idea what a (genuine) Indian Ashram might be like before reading this and though I'm not particularly religious myself, I found it facinating. I also found it very refreshing that someone can write honestly and passionately about religious experiences without losing her common sense and sense of humour, or in any way try to tell the reader what they should believe.
Book Review: Tiramisu for the soul
Summary: 4 Stars
This is an enjoyable and thoughtful book about one woman's journey of self-discovery and fulfilment through travel to Italy, India and Indonesia. In each of these places, she finds bodily and spiritual nourishment as she recovers from a traumatic divorce. Elizabeth Gilbert comes across as a warm and funny character with a gift for making friends and an openness to new experiences. I enjoyed learning about life in the ashram and the practice of meditation but that is probably only because I am interested in yoga myself. The strongest part of the book is probably the section set in Bali where we gain more of an insight into the people and culture of that place. As the book is very much centred on one woman's personal journey, the narrative can seem rather self-centred at times.
This is not a 'travel' book with detailed and luminous insights into places and cultures, but rather an inspiring and humorous book to be read for encouragement and entertainment.
Book Review: Laugh-Whine-Obsess
Summary: 3 Stars
'Eat, Pray, Love...' was a book I liked and disliked at the same time. On the one hand, it was fresh, witty and fun, on the other hand, it would devolve into obsessive ruminations about Liz Gilbert's failed marriage, her attempt to find God and her sadness and perceived "misery". It was at once clever and boring, hot and cold, cathartic and self-indulgent.
The book begins with Liz Gilbert questioning her marriage. She ultimately leaves her husband, finds a boyfriend, gets rid of him too and thus starts the quest for God and the meaning of "her" life. She does this by eating her way through Italy, praying and meditating in India and hanging out and making whoopee in Bali. Initially I loved her insight and wit. I found myself actually laughing out loud at her intuitive commentary, but then I found myself getting bored (and frankly irritated) at her droning on and on about being so sad and devastated, and the pain she was in, and the heartache, and sorrow and misery, ad nauseam. I was waiting for her to describe something truly miserable, heart-breaking or tragic that had happened in her life, but all I found was a woman who went through a couple of failed relationships and acts like she's the only one in the world who's been through it. I kept thinking, good grief, get over yourself girl! I mean, really, the majority of women who go through divorces (or worse) pick themselves up and move on without self-indulgent self-reflection for a week, nonetheless a whole year! Most of the women I know have no time for self-pity, and Liz Gilbert was "The Queen" of self-pity (at least in this book). It started out funny, witty and insightful in Italy, crescendoing to a full-bore whine in India, and ending back to her whiny and self-absorbed persona in Bali. She goes through life as a Drama Queen, and she seems to see every misstep or unpleasant experience as so devastating. I think a person who grew up in an intact, two-parent home, married once to a husband who loved and provided for her (and who has been able to promptly find replacements for him), in addition to always seeming to be able to get what she needs when she needs it, whether it's food, travel, love, or money, is not someone who needs to be writing a book about her perceived sorrow and misery. She needs to give many, many thanks, stop obsessing, and MOVE ON!