Eat Pray Love One Womans Search for Everything Across Italy India and Indonesia

Eat Pray Love One Womans Search for Everything Across Italy India and Indonesia

Starred Review. 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.
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User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars Eat, Pray, Love
Great price, book condition is new as advertized, very fast delivery, and I will do future business with Amazon.com again because of the efficiency of the transaction. Thanks for the sale.

1 Star Not written in a Godly way
Well,,this is not what I think God had intended for us Christ Followers to read. It’s about love more than a godly woman,,I feel. I Would not recommend to a Christan woman of faith.

1 Star Another turnoff
Ostensibly about things spiritual, Eat, Pray, Love is IMO about nothing except its author. Narcissistic in the extreme and exceedingly repetitive (OK, we get it, you’re depressed already), this memoir might better have been called “A Year in the Life of Elizabeth Gilbert”. The author is to be applauded for taking a break from the life that apparently was destroying her soul, but there’s not enough here of interest to others to warrant an entire book, unless you happen to care about Gilbert’s every thought. Because I chose to stop reading it after the section on Italy, I’ll stop writing about it here. Enough said.

2 Stars Narcissistic, Annoying, and Too Girly
I’m not sure who started the hype about this book, but it’s not true. While the author’s storytelling is witty and funny, this does not make up for the narcissism of a relatively spoiled woman who happened to encounter a kink in her life (a bad relationship). Rather than doing anything that could help better the world with the year she is given to take off and write this book, she spends her time fussing over a cute boy or two in Italy, obsessing over exactly how to meditate in India, and justifying the break from her self-imposed year-long fast from sex while she’s in Indonesia. The Pray section of the book is the most annoying, and I would have stopped reading the book altogether had I not promised the girlfriend who gave me the book that I would read it. The book lacks any depth (emotional, cultural, or otherwise), and inspires its readers to nothing but their own self-centeredness. The only thing going for it is the author’s wit.

4 Stars Mixed feelings
When I finished the book, I was glad I had read it. But it took a long time to read it as the first third seemed to just go on and on and on. The second third was o.k. reading. The last of the book was excellent and made it worth the time.

It got mixed reviews from my friends….people seemed to either REALLY like it or really didn’t….few inbetweens.

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