Eat, Pray, Love is a memoir recounting Gilbert's personal journey across Italy, India, and Indonesia. In Italy she strives to learn the secret to worldly pleasure, in India, the secret of devotion and spirituality, and in Indonesia, the way to balance the two.
While I love the idea of Eat, Pray, Love - the whole notion of self-discovery and enjoying every moment of life - I found Gilbert a bit hard to sympathize with. I get that she was unhappy, I get that she was a strong woman and did what she needed to do, but the fact that she "dropped everything" for this grand journey around the world is a bit tarnished for me by the very fact that her trip was financed by a paid-in-advance book deal. While I have no doubt that Gilbert's trip was a life changing expereince, it strikes me as less of a "dropping everything" expereince and more of a great opportunity to travel and call it work.
I've read memoirs before, but I found that this one made frequent reference to the fact that it was a memoir - if that makes sense. Because I was frequently reminded that the book was being written for a commercial purpose, I found that I was somewhat distracted from the larger message of the book.
On the other hand, Eat, Pray, Love couldn't have been all bad judging from the speed at which I read it. In fact, I polished it off in just a couple of days during which I also did lots of skiing and had quality family time. I found tons of "inspirational" and "quotable" lines, which for me is a sure sign that I was engaged in the book.
Even though I took issue with a few things about the book, overall Eat, Pray, Love was well worth the read.
No comments:
Post a Comment