LIKE MANY WOMEN, my reaction — or shall we say relationship? — to Elizabeth Gilbert’s juggernaut bestseller Eat Pray Love (first published and 2006 and by 2008 a global sensation) was complicated. On the one hand, the book is mildly embarrassing; Eat Pray Love falls squarely in the chick lit category, a schmaltzy fairytale-like admission to the feminine hankering for fairytale-like love (someone even recently quipped on Twitter that the first problem she had with it was how to hide the fact that she was reading it). On the other hand, however, it’s a rather good read, a true story, a real woman’s memoir of overcoming a comparatively small yet personally overwhelming struggle. In its own fairytale-like way, it is irresistible — but this was also the source of its doom.
Now, for the few of you who may insist that you know nothing about Eat Pray Love, here it is in a nutshell: a financially successful but not particularly famous author finds herself getting divorced, going into depression, and then taking a year to travel in order to reinvigorate her life. In Italy, she indulges – eating her way through the first third of the year. In India, she joins an ashram (the book is extremely spiritual, and this section is so heartrendingly painful that you wonder why anyone would call this book fluffy… until you get to the next). And finally, in Indonesia, tying up the circle in perfectly fairytale style, she finds love.
All of this is a true story, told in a fashion that is alternately charming, mildly annoying, and deeply honest.
