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Search - Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
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Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia Author: |
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Book Information
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Book Description:
Gilbert (The Last American Man) grafts the structure of romantic fiction upon the inquiries of reporting in this sprawling yet methodical travelogue of soul-searching and self-discovery. Plagued with despair after a nasty divorce, the author, in her early 30s, divides a year equally among three dissimilar countries, exploring her competing urges for earthly delights and divine transcendence.
First, pleasure: savoring Italy's buffet of delights -- the world's best pizza, free-flowing wine and dashing conversation partners -- Gilbert consumes la dolce vita as spiritual succor. "I came to Italy pinched and thin," she writes, but soon fills out in waist and soul. Then, prayer and ascetic rigor: seeking communion with the divine at a sacred ashram in India, Gilbert emulates the ways of yogis in grueling hours of meditation, struggling to still her churning mind. Finally, a balancing act in Bali, where Gilbert tries for equipoise "betwixt and between" realms, studies with a merry medicine man and plunges into a charged love affair.
Sustaining a chatty, conspiratorial tone, Gilbert fully engages readers in the year's cultural and emotional tapestry -- conveying rapture with infectious brio, recalling anguish with touching candor -- as she details her exotic tableau with history, anecdote and impression.
First, pleasure: savoring Italy's buffet of delights -- the world's best pizza, free-flowing wine and dashing conversation partners -- Gilbert consumes la dolce vita as spiritual succor. "I came to Italy pinched and thin," she writes, but soon fills out in waist and soul. Then, prayer and ascetic rigor: seeking communion with the divine at a sacred ashram in India, Gilbert emulates the ways of yogis in grueling hours of meditation, struggling to still her churning mind. Finally, a balancing act in Bali, where Gilbert tries for equipoise "betwixt and between" realms, studies with a merry medicine man and plunges into a charged love affair.
Sustaining a chatty, conspiratorial tone, Gilbert fully engages readers in the year's cultural and emotional tapestry -- conveying rapture with infectious brio, recalling anguish with touching candor -- as she details her exotic tableau with history, anecdote and impression.
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Top Member Book Reviews
Suzy V. (
74 member(s) found this review helpful.
Didn't like it. Gilbert struck me throughout the book as someone who looks in the mirror, is completely enamoured with what she sees, and then writes 300+ blase pages about it. This book is literally all about herself - and I do understand that this is an autobiography - but she just goes on and on and on about how she's feeling or her weight problems or her love life and it does grow tiresome after about 100 pages. The fact that this book is a NY Times bestseller is what kept me reading, but I ultimately gave up. Lovely cover though.
Rebecca H. (
59 member(s) found this review helpful.
I didn't like it and gave up reading it halfway through India; I skimmed the rest of the book and was glad I didn't spend more time reading it. I don't easily stop reading books, I'll tough it out to the bitter end, but I couldn't with this book. I found the author to be entitled, whiney, and she didn't seem to be enlightened by any of the wonderful opportunities laid at her feet. She added every challenge to her collection of woe and misery as more proof her life is so difficult, and she has every right to be ungrateful and complain. A paid trip to Italy? "Oh, so horrible that I don't have a lover to share it with, because I LEFT HIM." A paid trip to India? "Oh, meditation makes me cranky." I just couldn't tolerate it and gave up.
Eat Pray Love? How about, "Traveled the world paid for by my publisher and had to write some drivel that seemed profound to justify the expense account, and then my publisher felt bad that they spent so much money for me to have no fun and marketed the hell out of this book to make back their money."
I don't get why this is a best-seller, other than the ferocious marketing.
53 member(s) found this review helpful.
I have to say that I did not even finish reading this book. I have been a voracious reader all my life and I can only think of 3 books that I have not finished in 37 years and this would be one of them. I got this book based on all the great reviews I saw, but found myself completely bored out of my skull with trying to read this.
37 member(s) found this review helpful.
This was a very annoying book. It's all about a womans self indulgent journey to find happiness while she writes about it and gets paid to do it. Not a bad deal for her, but annoying to me.
31 member(s) found this review helpful.
"Eat Pray Love" by Elizabeth Gilbert is "one woman's search for everything across Italy, India, and Indonesia".
It came highly recommended to me. I love travel. I love reading about other people's experiences while traveling. I really enjoy reading about everywhere, places I've been and places I haven't been. But, I really dislike reading about someone who complains about their live. This is what I call the "poor me" syndrome. And let me tell you, this book's got that.
Gilbert's "poor me" went on for most of the book. It was so infiltrated that I almost couldn't finish it. But, I had to. Why? Because I really wanted to hear what it was like in Bali, not because I cared about any of the characters. Well, that's not true. There was an old man in Bali who I cared about.
If you're going to whine and complain about how bad your life is, don't make me read about it for over 300 pages. One or two would do.
The good part of the book? Hearing about Italy and Indonesia. But I still don't really recommend that you put yourself through it.
22 member(s) found this review helpful.
I really enjoyed this book. I loved each part for the info she told about. I felt like I was with Gilbert on her travels. I loved the honesty and vulnerablility of Gilbert in writing of what she went through to get rid of all the emotional baggage. I loved the part about Pray best. Where she talks of trying to meditate and the "ego" won't let her go into a meditative state. Though Love was just as wonderful. I think this book has the capacity of changing your life if you take the info and apply it to your own life.
18 member(s) found this review helpful.
Introspective and beutifully written. The author made choices I do not understand but they seemed to enrich her own life experience.
Caryn S. (
15 member(s) found this review helpful.
What an enjoyable read. Let author Elizabeth Gilbert take you on a spiritual and pleasurable journey through Italy, India and Indonesia. This book should make you feel like more of a complete person.
14 member(s) found this review helpful.
Alternately reverent & irreverent tale of one woman's year abroad. I loved the parts about Italy (eat) and Indonesia (Bali to be more specific, love). Although I found the section about her stay at an Indian ashram less interesting, the descriptions of her fellow worshippers keeps it interesting.
11 member(s) found this review helpful.
This book was fabulous! I can understand the woman's quest for happiness. I think approaching the dilemma with a journey, that took her through everything she required for happiness, was moving. After reading the book I hopped online and booked my next vacation.
Please Rate these Book Reviews
For anyone with a spiritual / self-help bent - and if you love to travel and escape into another life.
I really enjoyed this book. The section in the Indian ashram could have been a little shorter and less self-elevating (at times it seems a little bit whiny or intended to make you see what a wonderfully good person she really is - really!). But overall, a good story and worth reading.
This book had some parts that dragged, some chapters were a little disorienting, but overall I found it engrossing. So much was presented about the culture of that part of the world that I found myself grateful with every turn of the page to be an American.
Avi B. (This book is now on my favorite book list. I can't recommend it enough!!!
This was a phenomenal and inspiring book. I will not be posting it here to give away as I'm sure I will be reading it again and again. Something I rarely do!
I'm in the middle of it and am enjoying it - but I've put it down and don't feel the overwhelming desire to pick it back up. May feel different when I finish
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