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Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia |  | Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
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New (190) Used (2006) Collectible (9) from $0.01
Seller: keen_northwest
Rating:  2031 reviews
Sales Rank: 157
Media: Paperback
Edition: Later Printing
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0143038419
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.4
EAN: 9780143038412
ASIN: 0143038419
Publication Date: January 30, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9780143038412 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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Product Description
This beautifully written, heartfelt memoir touched a nerve among both readers and reviewers. Elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made the difficult choice to leave behind all the trappings of modern American success (marriage, house in the country, career) and find, instead, what she truly wanted from life. Setting out for a year to study three different aspects of her nature amid three different cultures, Gilbert explored the art of pleasure in Italy and the art of devotion in India, and then a balance between the two on the Indonesian island of Bali. By turns rapturous and rueful, this wise and funny author (whom Booklist calls "Anne Lamotts hip, yoga- practicing, footloose younger sister") is poised to garner yet more adoring fans.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 2031
 Not Bad March 11, 2010
Sarah Bogosta
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
So you are in your thirties, recently divorced and just out of a tumultuous rebound relationship ending in a crippling depression, the first thing you do is head abroad for a year, right? Sound a little crazy? Well that is just what Elizabeth Gilbert did, and she chronicles her journey in her spiritual memoir "Eat Pray Love: One Women's search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia." The book was engaging and easy to read and enjoy. It is something that would be a great book to read on the beach. However it also ended up being quite superficial and hard to believe.
In the midst of her divorce Gilbert takes a journalism assignment in Indonesia that will prove to change her life forever. While in Bali she met Krueit Lieyer a ninth generation Balinese medicine man who told her minutes after meeting "You will come back her to Bali and live here and teach me English. And I will teach you everything I know" (28). She decided she would spend 4 months in Italy, India and Indonesia, specifically Bali.
After her divorce is finalized she heads first to Italy and rents an apartment in the City of Love, Rome. There is one stipulation of her trip that defies "the word of Rome, SEX" (103) she vows to be celibate for the trip. Instead of having sex she chooses to satisfy herself by eating decadent and fattening food. While the events of this section are believable the names of people are a little out there. She has a friend for example named Luca Spaghetti. The name seems a little too ironic to me.
I found the third of the book describing her time in Rome to be by far the most interesting. She spends her time eating, traveling, and learning Italian. However she did not dedicate time in this country to her spiritual and faith journey, which is of course the entire purpose of the book and her travels. The only serious part of this section was the process of overcoming loneliness and stopping her usage of anti depressants. Elizabeth is an over exaggerator of sorts, but her description of depression and loneliness is incredibly believable and the reader is able to really see how she is feeling. These are feelings that are easy to relate to.
The next part of the book was much duller. The events seemed unrealistic and the way in which it is written is hard to follow. While in India she spends her time at the Ashram of her Guru. Her Guru is her spiritual leader, yet she has seen her only once while she was speaking in New York. She is not in actual contact with her at all; the guru is traveling abroad and doesn't communicate with the students at the ashram. How can someone who you have never even had a conversation with guide you on how you should live your life? This path is completely about her spirituality and the journey she makes. She spends almost all of her time there meditating and trying to get closer to god.
This section was the least believable to me. Some of the events just don't seem realistic. At one point her roommate forgot and padlocks her into their room. She jumped out her window two stories to get to morning prayer on time, a prayer which she in fact hated and was always trying to avoid, and skipped on many occasions.
Bali came next and was also a more exciting part of her trip; however, it also showed Gilbert in an obnoxious way putting herself on a pedestal. While in Bali, Gilbert was able to show a balance between her spiritual journey and also her ability to enjoy herself in other ways. She was able to study meditation, with the same medicine man from over two years earlier who told her she would return. He teaches her more about spirituality and happiness, telling her to just sit and smile while meditating (231).
At one point she got into an accident and scraped up her knee. The medicine man for some reason could not help her, so she had to find someone else who, surprise, became her best friend. This seems almost scripted to me; why wouldn't her friend who is a medicine man help her? She wants to make a point of how great a person she is with her donation to Wayan her new friend, and how she is trying to help her. Wayan is slow to be a house with the donated money so Gilbert lies and says she will take the money if a home is not bought, she then wants pity and reinforcement that she is doing the right thing and is not a bad person.
Elizabeth Gilbert's book chronicling a year of soul searching is clearly a spiritual memoir. The purpose of her trip was to become closer to God and to have a greater understanding of that voice that speaks to her. She seems to start off as a Christian but her spirituality takes many unconventional twists and turns in her path to "enlightenment."
As this is a spiritual memoir of it is course all about Elizabeth Gilbert. Her writing however is a little to self absorbed for my taste. When she has conversations with people it is always about her and her problems, never the other person. This at times turned me off from Gilbert. I started out reading this book very excited. I was quite disappointed, while I like the book; I wanted to like it more. As someone who is only twenty and still in college it should be no surprise that I did not connect well with the book. Gilbert is not writing to the twenty-somethings, but rather to women in their thirties and older. I believe that if I was in that age group I would have enjoyed it more and been able to connect and relate to what she went through.
 what a boring and self-absorbed, disappointing book! March 11, 2010
J. Tan
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
I have never taken the time to do a review of any book online... but I absolutely think this book is crap and boring that I had to go to Amazon's website to write a review. I think the author is so self-absorbed that she has not really done any justice to researching and thinking what search for self and life's meaning really is. Granted that it's her book so she can talk about herself all she wants, and for some reason, a lot of people have bought her book that it has become a bestseller, there are so many more books that are more insightful on the same topic! I will be more wary next time when I see a New York Times Book Review that says a book is irresistible. Her book's a New York Times Notable Book... and I suddenly had this thought on whether author's can pay to get such accolade.
 Sweet and Helpful March 11, 2010
K (New York, NY)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I enjoyed this book at the time of reading. I had been going through a similar process myself, and it was wonderful to follow Elizabeth's journey of self-deprecating wit and humor amidst a rather turbulent mental breakdown.
 Eat, Pray, Recycle Sex and the City Episodes March 10, 2010
Deborah Kreski Bonanno
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love chronicles Gilbert's yearlong sabbatical in hopes of healing from her recent divorce, discovering herself, and achieving the balance between pleasure and spirituality. In lieu of her recent messy divorce from her husband, Gilbert begins to look for a meaning beyond her superficial life in her little personal 14-mile wide world, known as Manhattan. She journeys to three very different countries in the pursuit of three equally different aspects of life: pleasure, spirituality and the balance between the two. Gilbert's talent as a writer is undeniable. She has a witty and refreshing writing style that makes Eat, Pray, Love a very entertaining read and what makes her book so entertaining are Gilbert's mini-adventures throughout the book. However, Gilbert develops story lines leave the reader questioning the authenticity and truth behind her story.
In the first stop of her journey, Italy, Gilbert discovers the art of pleasure. In Rome, she develops a steamy, passionate love affair with gelato and pizza. She learns the language, meets new friends and immerses herself in the Italian culture. She embraces the romanticism that makes Italy one of the most unforgettable places on earth, and leaves Italy free of the chains of depression she was bound to in Manhattan.
In India, Gilbert studies the art of devotion. She works with a Guru to guide her spiritual journey. Gilbert sets out to separate herself from the luxuries and chaos that she has padded her life with and separate herself from materialism in order to reach spiritual understanding. Gilbert, frustrated with the difficulty of meditation, spends endless hours in her cluttered mind trying to reach the divine state of cognitive peace. Finally, after weeks of silent meditation, she has a spiritual breakthrough. Gilbert writes, "To know God, you need only to renounce one thing, your division from God" (192). This quote illustrates her realization that in order to be at peace with your spirituality, your must realize that God is not your superior, but a part of your spirit.
Gilbert's last stop is in Bali, Indonesia. In Bali, Gilbert reconnects with an elderly medicine man that teaches her the importance of balance between the art of pleasure, and the art of devotion. In her quest for this balance, she finds herself living out a spiritual love story of her own.
Eat, Pray, Love is a book that could easily be found in the travel or self-help section of a bookstore, however it is considered a spiritual memoir. From the beginning of Gilbert's journey she makes it clear that she is seeking spirituality beyond the Christian belief of one sole and singular God. Instead, she is looking for a more personal and self-reliant god, one who is within Gilbert and accepts her for who she is. She is searching for a God who loves and appreciates her positive traits and accepts and embraces her negative flaws, all at once. Gilbert writes that she, "always responded with breathless excitement to anyone who has ever said that God does not live in a dogmatic scripture or in a distant throne in the sky," (14).
I enjoyed reading about Gilbert's understanding in the Buddhist and Hindu faith, however I felt myself constantly waiting for more insight. While reading Eat, Pray, Love I prayed (no pun intended) that Gilbert would tear down her walls of narcissism and superficiality. Yet despite her spiritual awakening in India, she never reaches this resolution, this aspect made it difficult for me to like and relate to Gilbert as a person and the heroine of her novel.
Gilbert's writing style, riddled with her clever humor and vibrant attention to detail, make for entertaining storylines. I felt like I was walking the crowded streets of Rome with her or perched seaside in India, deep in meditation. I often found myself laughing out loud at her witty commentary. Her unique and witty metaphors/similes such as "Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit," (67) made her book enjoyable. I found it refreshing that the author of a spiritual memoir could interject borderline cynical and self-deprecating humor without steering too far off the spiritual path.
Despite Gilbert's humor and wit, it is Gilbert's lack of authenticity that made me dislike the book. Every event seems to be prepackaged and wrapped in a bow, leading to a realization and stepping stone for the next event to come. Everything seems to fall in Gilbert's favor. As an avid traveler, I have found this to be true: when travelling, not everything, if ANYTHING, goes according to plan. Gilbert writes "...to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice," however I did not see any sacrifice in Gilbert's journey in between drinking wine on the sea in Italy and meeting her soul mate. It was all a little too Hollywood for me, as if Gilbert wrote her memoir with a future screenplay adaptation in mind.
A memoir clearly geared for women in their mid 30's to early 40's, at times it felt as though I was reading recycled Sex and the City plots. Gilbert's stories were complete with the same rising action, climax and resolution that is expected in a 30 minute television show. Trite quotes such as, "In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely," (147) made me roll my eyes and made me at how obviously she was preying on middle-aged women on the cusp of a mid-life crisis, looking for a spiritual guru to lean on.
For a reader looking for a spiritual memoir, I would not recommend Eat, Pray, Love. Gilbert's book has an entertaining plot and story, but Gilbert's book as a whole is just that: a story. Her lack of authenticity and superficiality make this book just another New York Times Bestseller, not a staple for bookshelves or a tool for spiritual enlightenment.
Really great book overall March 8, 2010
L. Harris (Massachusetts, USA)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I read a bunch of reviews before purchasing the book. A friend highly recommended the book as well. I had read one review that mentioned Elizabeth being selfish and complaining a lot. My response to that review is that Elizabeth is supposed to be selfish! She is on a journey of self-discovery! She isn't traveling to save the poor in 3rd world countries. She specifically traveled to write the book about her own personal experience on how she wanted to figure out her place in life and how to heal a broken heart. This book wasn't meant to be a self-help book for others necessarily. She wanted to figure out her own problems and the reader could probably relate in one way or another. I also considered how she did some complaining, but who cares?? Again, that's part of the process towards how someone learns and grows. People fight the truth and reality and on that journey, the learning process can be tough because you are discovering new things about yourself which is why Elizabeth complained a lot. But notice by the end of the book she was A LOT more calm and relieved and satisfied. That's why it's such a great book, because you start to really learn and grow with Elizabeth and feel that sigh of relief in the end. My favorite part was in the end when she talks about the tree wanting the acorn to grow into itself. It really made sense of the book as a whole. The one reason why I gave 4 stars and not 5 stars was because i did find myself browsing over some overly-descriptive thoughts or hypothetical ideas that didn't have anything specifically to do with the actual storyline - i felt the same about DaVinci Code - which i loved too, but would have again only given 4 stars for a similar writing style reason.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 2031
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