Okay, so I’m a bit late to this game since the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, already has a follow-up, but maybe there’s still hope to dissuade anyone else from reading this. Memoirs are tricky under the best of circumstances, but I was game to give it a go. Who doesn’t love a story of personal redemption? For those that don’t know about the subject matter, Gilbert got a divorce then spent a year traveling. She spent 4 months in Italy (the ‘eat’ part), 4 months in India (the ‘pray’ part) and 4 months in Indonesia (you got it, the ‘love’ part). To give you an idea of the revelatory depth or lack thereof in this book, Gilbert makes the point that all of these countries start with the letter ‘I’ (and oh my gosh, she writes her memoir in first person, too!!!) as if it was a cosmic sign that this year abroad had a massively higher purpose than mere coincidence could possibly have.
So, I made it through the Italy part and through a few sections of the India part until I could no longer force myself to care. Even in the Italy part, I had extreme misgivings about her, uh, let’s just call it adherence to accuracy. I have clever friends. I have very very smart friends. I have extremely witty and sensitive friends, but the amount of clever quips attributed to her own friends is staggering to me. It was as if each of her friends was a veritable ’self-help’ manual unto him/herself, always ready with just the right anecdote at just the right time to give her just the right amount of comfort. Oh, and then there’s the wisdom that she attributes to strangers, too. I don’t buy it.
My patience wore out in the India section with the introduction of Richard from Texas. He had apparently been praying for years for an open heart. Who could guess that he’d one day have open heart surgery? Wow, I never saw that one coming but thankfully Gilbert included the morality lesson along with it for us all to watch what we pray for because otherwise that insight may have been lost…
This actually brings me to the biggest criticism of the book, well, aside from ultimately not caring so much about the main character which is a shame for a memoir: I kept thinking that Gilbert and anyone who helped with this book just thought that women were not very bright. Or resilient. Or secure. That made me a little sad.
Thanks for this. Pretty much aligns with impression, not even having read it! What do you think accounts for its widespread appeal, then? I remember seeing so many women reading this all over NYC for a long long time!
Hi Sheila-
Well…hmmm…It may be that there are many women who are not happy in their marriages and it gave them some sort of space to fantasize about leaving their husbands. I don’t know, really. It seemed incredibly shallow, which I guess is helpful for a fantasy. Actually, you know what it was? It seemed as if this book was designed by a committee based on a survey of women (aged 25-44, probably) of their frustrations, hopes, fears, and fantasies. Any identification that I had with the main character was simply that she seemed to be about 1 step away from any number of cliches that all of us are familiar with. Is that too harsh?