or, as i like to call it, The Benefits of being Rich and Having No Children.
Despite all the buzz that’s been filling the media of all sorts for years about Eat, Pray, Love, i never had any interest in the book solely because of that ominous middle word, pray. A book like this is meant for entertainment and when you see the world one way and the author sees it another, it’s just hard to get anything out of it. However, having read and enjoyed the sequel Committed (which contained very little mention of religion or spirituality) and seeing that the movie was set to come out on my birthday, i decided to give Eat, Pray, Love a shot anyway.
First of all, i was hoping to learn more about why Elizabeth Gilbert decided to leave her marriage. The book does a good job of illustrating how completely incapacitated she was by the unhappiness she felt with her marriage and suggests that there was definitely a very good reason for all that misery, but fails to actually disclose what exactly the problem was. Gilbert says the reasons are “too sad and too personal” to write about, and so she doesn’t. And so i still can’t feel for her at all.
Here’s my problem with this: she chose to write this book. She disclosed a lot of personal stuff in the book (like the page about masturbation that made me want to go bury my head deep in a sand dune). She didn’t want to tell her ex-husband’s secrets, but he hates her anyway so why not go ahead and write about it and maybe help someone else’s marriage in so doing? Her divorce made her miserable, which made her have to go on a spiritual journey, which ended when she forgave herself for destroying her marriage. I see some sort of animal eating its own tail here. And the weirdest part is that she ends up getting married again. I’m sure that all of this is more complicated than i’m making it out to be and i definitely agree that marriages just need to end sometimes, but Elizabeth Gilbert has told me everything about these five years of her life except for what sparked it all and i’m left just wishing to know WHY.
Whatever it was that happened, it made her decide to pursue pleasure, spirituality, and a balance between the two. So she goes to Italy and that’s all fun and good. And then she goes to India and subjects herself to little sleep, little social interaction, a lot of hard work and a ton of chanting and meditation. This is the part i couldn’t relate to at all. Except maybe the beginning of it when she’s all whiny about the whole thing, ’cause that’s what i would feel like, too, in a place like that. But then it gets pretty mystical and i couldn’t help thinking “of course you’re going to start seeing electric snakes and stuff when you do that sort of thing to your brain.”
By the way – i’m going to excuse myself if i’ve used tenses incorrectly here because this is a blog and nobody is paying me for it, but Elizabeth Gilbert bounces from one tense to another in this book with a truly distracting frequency that to me just makes no sense. I think someone needs to go back and edit it one more time.
In Bali she meets a lot of interesting people and falls in love and seems to be a normal person again. Elizabeth Gilbert certainly is good at making friends with people, and i can imagine that traveling the world eating delicious food and talking to interesting people would be pretty great. I didn’t get the whole spiritual bit though, and i think the book was hyped way beyond its actual value. Overall, i’d say it was an okay book.
I did go see the movie on my birthday, and i thought the beginning where she just up and leaves her husband was even sadder on screen than in the book. I felt really sorry for her ex-husband. The spirituality was down-played and some plot elements were added for effect, but i think for the most part the movie was true to the story and, much like the book, all-in-all it was pretty alright. Save your $5.50-9 and get it at the Red Box some day.
Wednesday, August 18th, 2010 11:21 am • books, religion
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August 18th, 2010 at 11:37 pm
Oh God, there’s masturbation in there? I gave this book to my GRANDMA.
Hahahaha.
Anyway. You had already kind of told me all these things when we went to go see the movie and I’m mildly curious so I might read it.
Also? Are we still going to plan a trip to Italy like we talked about that one time? Cause I totally want to.
Also, also? I was talking with a lady at work today about this movie and we decided there was definitely something up with Julia’s lips… Did you notice that???
August 19th, 2010 at 8:47 am
You can have my copy, Kelly. And yeah, Italy is going to happen. Some day.
I definitely noticed that Julia Roberts has collagen in her upper lip now. Gross.
August 26th, 2010 at 4:03 pm
[...] came my actual b-day, which i spent trying on wedding dresses, watching Eat, Pray, Love and playing Apples to Apples with a handful of my lovely [...]