Subtitled "One Woman's Search for Everything across Italy, India and Indonesia", Eat, Pray, Love is a candid memoir that focuses particularly on one year in the life of the author. After finalizing a bitter, seemingly never-ending divorce, Gilbert takes a year off to indulge her wanderlust and discover who is she outside of the confines of her life in the states.She first goes to Italy, where she soaks up the Italian language like a sponge all the while savoring each meal that comes her way. Next to rural India, where she cloisters herself in her guru's ashram. And, finally, to Bali where she seems to find balance and, in the end, love.
I'll be the first to admit that I had a hard time getting into this book. The Italy section, particularly at the beginning, is so focused on the problems Gilbert had before embarking on the journey that it wasn't an easy read. Then once I'm finally feeling comfortable, she's off to India and there's a completely different (and in some ways less-relatable) focus to the narrative. The Balinese part seemed to me the shortest. It's the most balanced, probably because Gilbert at this point is finally feeling things come together in terms of her overarching self-discovery journey.
While I didn't think that Eat, Pray, Love was as fantastic as I'd heard it'd be (it seemed at times much too detailed and at others not detailed enough), I'm definitely be interested in reading Gilbert's follow-up memoir (Weddings and Evictions) just to find out more about how things turned out with "Felipe".
It certainly was a journey of a book!
ReplyDeleteCheers,
Fiona