Eat, Pray, Love is the selection for Crofton's upcoming adult book discussion group on May 28th. It is journalist Elizabeth Gilbert's account of the year she spent traveling in Italy, India and Indonesia, exploring her personal physical, emotional and spiritual dimensions against the distinctive cultural backdrop of each country.
We selected this title based on its popularity, availability, and potential for discussion. Reader reviews indicated that most people felt strongly about EPL - they either embraced it as the best thing they'd read in years or denounced it as irritating, whiny, and trite. We were also looking for something cheerful, as our prior book club selection, The Glass Castle, was a beautifully written yet searingly painful story.
My personal experiece of EPL lies somewhere between the "love it" and "ditch it" camps, tilting a bit toward the "ditch it" side. Gilbert is a capable writer and a talented storyteller. Her voice is breathlessly girlish, chatty, often funny and occasionally self-deprecating. She stockpiles her story with metaphors, anecdotes, and confidences shared. And her quest is admirable: finding herself unhappy with the life she is leading, she bravely sets out to discern the source of her misery.
But it all felt a bit contrived. Gilbert is obviously smart, resourceful, determined - however, the complete package of this tale wraps up just a tad too neatly. Everywhere she goes, she finds exactly what she is seeking. After four months in Italy, her pleasure site, she departs with glowing skin and a trunkful of expensive lingerie. While sitting with a meditation group in an Ashram in India, she attains the much desired state of turiya (the fourth level of human consciousness), a divine bliss that in her own words "is what everyone has come here for." And finally, artfully, masterfully, she finds love with a capital "L" in Bali, breaking her self-imposed year of celibacy in the arms of Felipe - the attentive Brazilian gentleman whom she ultimately marries.
Of course, it doesn't help my skepticism to know that Gilbert had already obtained a contract to write just this book prior to setting out on her year-long "disgruntled and depressed professional lady on a fantasy quest" journey. It doesn't help my ornery view of her whirlwind year to know that this very contract financed her journey (and that she slipped back to the states in between Italy and India for a change of clothes and a "Merry Christmas" shout-out to the home folks).
I find that I can think more kindly of this book if I take it less seriously, and therein lies my tipping point with regard to EPL. Gilbert tries to have it all, I think, not only in the passions she seeks during her year of travel and self-searching, but also in the rubric of the book itself, which poses as something genuinely spiritual but comes off feeling more than slightly pre-fabricated.
