Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia
Elizabeth Gilbert

 

For those of you not in the loop of suburban book clubs—this book is all the rage. I received it as a gift. I hope it was given to me because I am known as someone who likes to travel, eat, and pray. I prefer this to the rather less flattering possibility that it was given to me because I am known as a self-absorbed, hedonistic, spiritual lightweight.

 

The book is billed as a kind of spiritual travelogue. At age 30 Elizabeth Gilbert suffered a full-blown existential crisis brought on by the realization that she did not want to have a baby. Rather, she wanted to get a divorce and set off on a very high-class version of the classic road trip. She spent a year eating in Italy, meditating in India, and whatevering in Indonesia.

 

I picked this book off a shelf at a neighbors’ house on New Years Eve (it was an effigy burning party with pirate costumes optional) and asked the hostess what she thought of the book. Her reply: “That woman needs some real problems.”

 

The book’s organization is modeled on the japa mala—strings of Indian prayer beads. The japa mala has 108 beads, the book has 108 short chapters. The book is further divided into 36 chapters for each country that Gilbert visited. These short chapters are the perfect length to read while sitting in the car waiting for sweaty middle schoolers to finish soccer practice and fantasizing that you too could be fully spiritually developed if only you were on a beach in Indonesia. The book is spiritual chick lit. Occasionally, it verges on theological porn.

 

Gilbert is an accomplished and charming writer. There is, however, a limit to the amount of time that I can be charmed by the whinging of a rich white woman on a Grand Tour. I found that limit to be approximately 50 pages.

 

Her positive self-talk is particularly inane. “I’m right here. What can I do for you?” she writes to herself. “I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you.” Please. Please. For the 21st century could we possibly declare self-love the “love that dare not speak its name.” We’ve all heard quite enough.

 

Very few people have the resources and freedom to take a year off to think about life. Those of us who have taken “the road more traveled” will have to learn to experience pleasure without three months in Italy… We will have to self-actualize in the basement doing laundry… We will have to find ourselves in the parking lot of Target… For that project this book offers very little.

Cook. Drive. Laugh. Don’t take your problems too seriously. And if you are looking for a little escapist fantasy try a few pages of Eat. Pray. Love.