Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, £7.99
After hearing about its rave reviews and receiving several recommendations from friends, I had high expectations for this book. While it wasn’t what I entirely expected, nonetheless it deserves all the praise it has earned. Elisabeth Gilbert wakes up one night on the bathroom floor realising that despite having a seemingly perfect life, she wants none of it. One painful divorce and a turbulent love affair later she discovers she yearns for the very things her life is missing: pleasure, spiritual fulfilment and devotion, and balance. Eat Pray Love follows her journey to Italy, where she searches for pleasure in dinner plates and Italian, to discovering spiritual awareness and devotion in a remote Ashram, all the way to Indonesia where a medicine man and friends help her achieve the balance and contentment she desperately seeks.
One reason this book stands out from others is its style and organisation. Written as a travelogue/ self-help/ self-memoir, Elizabeth manages to balance out these differing styles in a way that keeps the book fresh and not too cumbersome to read. The division of the chapters being symbolised as prayers for a prayer bead necklace too adds a fitting emphasis to her spiritual search, and also enables the book to be more easily read without becoming too bogged down in any unnecessary dialogue or unimportant information. It is this unique approach that sets Eat Pray Love apart from most other novels or travel literature today.
Elisabeth Gilbert’s experience as a writer is apparent throughout the novel, as she maintains a well-spoken and educated persona throughout. I couldn’t help but think however that the audience she was writing this novel for was mainly for women. On the other hand though many of the issues tackled in the book, such as the maintenance of relationships, the search for spiritual fulfilment and even finding a balance in one’s life are all issues that both sexes confront in their lives.
What struck me most about this novel though was its honest, raw display of emotion and personality. Elizabeth conveyed her heartache and pain in a way that anyone could relate to at some point in their lives, yet equally unique in that the reader could also see the story unfold from her own point of view. It is this accessibility that allows the reader to become captivated by Elizabeth’s journey and feel directly involved as she finds the peace and happiness she seeks.
With a large range of fans including Julia Roberts (who is also playing Elizabeth Gilbert in the upcoming film adaptation of Eat Pray Love) I would definitely recommend this to all my girlfriends.
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