Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert
Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
A funny, tender, utterly beguiling story about a woman’s search for happiness.
It’s three a.m. Liz, a thirty-something writer, is sobbing on the bathroom floor while her husband sleeps next door. She wants to walk out of her marriage but she’s not sure she can. Panicked and utterly lost, Liz begins to do something she’s never done before. She starts to pray.
From this point on, everything in Elizabeth’s life changes as she embarks on a year-long journey of self discovery. She takes herself off to Rome for 4 months to learn Italian but soon discovers eating and la dolce vita to be her main focus; next she’s off to India to try to quieten her mind with meditation at an ashram - and finally to Bali, for no better reason than she’d been there before and been told by a crazy old medicine man that she would come back and study him. But of course as the title alludes to, there she finds love.
Elizabeth Gilbert was a successful author, married, financially secure, with a big house and everything she thought she wanted. It was assumed her next step would be to have a baby, but instead she found herself sobbing on the bathroom floor at 3am, as she came to the realisation this was not what she really wanted at all.
About the Author:
Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of a short story collection, Pilgrims (a finalist for the Pen/Hemingway Award), a novel, Stern Men and a book of non fiction, The Last American Man (nominated for the National Book Award and a New York Times Notable Book for 2002). She is a writer-at-large for American GQ where she has received two National Magazine Award nominations for feature writing. Elizabeth Gilbert currently lives between New York and Brazil.
Reviews:
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
“If a more likable writer than Gilbert is currently in print, I haven’t found him or her…Gilbert’s prose is fueled by a mix of intelligence, wit and colloquial exuberance that is close to irresistible, and makes the reader only too glad to join the posse of friends and devotees who have the pleasure of listening in.” by Jennifer Egan
TIME MAGAZINE
“An engaging, intelligent and entertaining memoir…her account of her time in India is beautiful and honest and free of patchouli-scented obscurities.” by Lev Grossman
LOS ANGELES TIMES
“Gilbert’s journey is full of mystical dreams, visions and uncanny coincidences…Yet for every ounce of self-absorption her classical New-Age journey demands, Gilbert is ready with an equal measure of intelligence, humor and self-deprecation…Gilbert’s wry, unfettered account of her extraordinary journey makes even the most cynical reader dare to dream of someday finding God deep within a meditation cave in India, or perhaps over a transcendent slice of pizza.” by Erika Schickel
SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER
“This is an intriguing and substantive journey recounted with verve, humor and insight. Others have preceded Gilbert in writing this sort of memoir, but few indeed have done it better.” by John Marshall
ROCKY MOUNTAIN NEWS
“Fine, sometimes startling…Gilbert doesn’t wear spirituality like a fresh frock she hopes will make her pretty, but nurtures the spiritual seed within herself to find the beauty and love in everything.” by Sarah Peasley
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY
“This insightful, funny account of her travels reads like a mix of Susan Orlean and Frances Mayes - Gilbert’s journey is well worth taking.” by Jessica Shaw
LIBRARYJOURNAL.com
A Starred Review. “A probing, thoughtful title with a free and easy style, this work seamlessly blends history and travel for a very enjoyable read. Highly recommended.” by Jo-Anne Mary Benson
BOOKLIST
A Starred Review. “Gilbert, author of The Last American Man (2002) and a well-traveled I’ll-try-anything-once journalist, chronicles her intrepid quest for spiritual healing. Driven to despair by a punishing divorce and an anguished love affair, Gilbert flees New York for sojourns in the three Is. She goes to Italy to learn the language and revel in the cuisine, India to meditate in an ashram, and Indonesia to reconnect with a healer in Bali. This itinerary may sound self-indulgent or fey, but there is never a whiny or pious or dull moment because Gilbert is irreverent, hilarious, zestful, courageous, intelligent, and in masterful command of her sparkling prose. A captivating storyteller with a gift for enlivening metaphors, Gilbert is Anne Lamott’s hip, yoga-practicing, footloose younger sister, and readers will laugh and cry as she recounts her nervy and outlandish experiences and profiles the extraordinary people she meets. As Gilbert switches from gelato to kundalini Shakti to herbal cures Balinese-style, she ponders the many paths to divinity, the true nature of happiness, and the boon of good-hearted, sexy love. Gilbert’s sensuous and audacious spiritual odyssey is as deeply pleasurable as it is enlightening.” by Donna Seaman
Alan Richman’s take on “Eat, Pray, Love”
“Spilling out of this funny (and profound) circus car of a book are dozens of mesmerizing characters, people you’ll envy Liz Gilbert for finding, valuing, loving and, I couldn’t help noticing, joining for irresistible meals. I’ve never read an adventure quite like one, where a writer packs up her entire life and takes it on the road.” - Alan Richman.
Anne Lamott on “Eat, Pray, Love”
“This is a wonderful book, brilliant and personal, rich in spiritual insight, filled with sorrow and a great sense of humor. Elizabeth Gilbert is everything you would love in a tour guide, of magical places she has traveled to both deep inside and across the oceans: she’s wise, jaunty, human, ethereal, hilarious, heartbreaking, and God, does she pay great attention to the things that really matter.” — Anne Lamott
Jack Kornfield says about “Eat, Pray, Love”
“Elizabeth Gilbert takes us on pilgrimage, with the humor, insight and charm that only come with honest self-revelation and good writing.” — Jack Kornfield
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