Books

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth GilbertEat, Pray, Love lingers in the mind long after you’ve finished the last page. This remarkable saga of the author’s travels and awakening to love of self and love of the world is filled with humor, insight and wisdom. You cheer when she cheers, cry when she cries, and see the beauty of the world anew through her eyes.

So, if the beauty of the world happens to lie in a bowl of pasta in Italy, or on the back of a motorbike in Indonesia, then all the better for the lucky reader who comes along for the ride. Elizabeth Gilbert has achieved something wonderful with this deeply personal narrative. It takes a rare talent to depict the vicissitudes of life with such wry humor and honesty. After taking some hard knocks and making some tough decisions, the author sets out on a journey to find faith, to find herself, and perhaps to find love.

And what a journey! Eat, Pray, Love takes the reader around the world in search of good food, good friends and just maybe a connection with God along the way. From Italy to India to Indonesia, this book has something for everyone — it’s part travelogue, part culinary treatise, and part spiritual journey — and it all works. There is love lost and love found, total self indulgence and complete acts of generosity, profound loneliness and searing moments of connection.

What holds it all together is Gilbert’s honesty, humor and ability to laugh at herself. If you’ve ever experienced love, divorce, depression, or any version of “the dark night of the soul” you will recognize what Gilbert is feeling, and marvel at her ability to describe those moments, much less to find humor in them. Conversely, if you ever experienced love, spiritual connection or glimpses of enlightenment, you will recognize the truth of what she is recounting in the high points of her journey. This is one of those grand tales that you will want to recommend to everyone that you know, and that will leave you wishing the author well and wanting to make your own journey.

For more information, please visit www.elizabethgilbert.com

by Cheryl Shainmark
In addition to writing books, Elizabeth has worked steadily as a journalist. Throughout much of the 1990’s she was on staff at SPIN Magazine. In 1999, Elizabeth began working for GQ magazine, where her profiles of extraordinary men earned her three National Magazine Award Nominations, as well as repeated appearances in the “Best American” magazine writing anthologies. She has also written for such publications as The New York Times Magazine, Real Simple, Allure, Travel and Leisure and O, the Oprah Magazine. She has been a contributor to the Public Radio show "This American Life", and has several times shown up at John Hodgman's Little Gray Book Lecture Series, most notably during Lecture Four on the subject "Hints for Public Singing."