Eat, Pray, Love

by Elizabeth Gilbert
I must confess that I started this book about a year ago and have not finished it. It sits on my shelf, and I gloss past it everyday, look at the cover and just can’t pick it up. I'm bored with cover.  It looks like a book for a woman filled with ennui and no imagination.  A friend loaned me the book because I love Italy where the first leg of the narrator’s journey occurs. After Italy, I was bored and couldn’t trudge through it anymore.


Gilbert is the subject of this book. Battling depression from a contentious divorce, a rocky rebound romance, and a debilitating bout of self-loathing she decided at 34 to travel to Italy, Indonesia and India. The story is one of a woman trying to heal herself from an emotional and spiritual crisis.

Many reviews I’ve read of Eat, Pray, Love, praise it and the style of Elizabeth Gilbert. So many people enjoyed it that they’ve made a movie based on the book starring Julia Roberts, Javier Bardem, James Franco and Billy Crudup.

I loved the scenes in Italy probably because it’s a country I love and am familiar with (I’ve dated 2 Italians). But after Italy it I found it to be un-engaging.

Maybe I was bored because I have never been married and therefore never divorced. I didn’t identify in any way with the utter depression and self hatred expressed by Gilbert. I was depressed reading her narrative of a woman on the verge of giving up. It also could have been that I found the first person narrative grating.

Perhaps I was bored by the incessant travelogue of spiritual healing in India, which for me was bland and banal. I found the spiritual healers she encounters trivial. In Shantaram, Gregory David Roberts, created a vibrant India in which I felt a connection to the country and the people. I felt like I could smell the city, hear the taxis and people bartering in the streets. Comparatively, Gilbert’s India lacked anything interesting or lively.

I dropped the book half way in India and didn’t make it to Indonesia and I can’t say that I care. If you’ve read the book and think it’s worth it to finish please let me know. Otherwise it is going in my donation pile.