#4 - Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Nonfiction (suggestion), 334 pages

Since this book was suggested by two people, I decided it would be the first of the 'suggestions' that I read. The subtitle, 'One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia', pretty much sums up the book.

Eat, Pray, Love is a collection of tales, chronicling the author's personal journey from despair, loneliness and suicidal thoughts to peace with herself and her destiny. After a bitter divorce and some soul searching, Gilbert decides that her journey to find herself will happen over the course of a year, and will take her to Italy to learn about pleasure, India to learn about devotion and Indonesia to learn how to combine the two. The book is organized to detail Gilbert's journey chronologically, although some of her vignettes are about her life as a child or before, during or immediately after her divorce. These, however, generally directly relate to what Gilbert is experiencing at the time.

The first part of the book (as ingeniously suggested by the cover art), takes Gilbert to Italy, where she mostly eats. A lot. Which is fine with me. As someone who has travelled to several different countries myself, I can tell you that I have a lot of memories along the lines of: "Oh my GOD, when I was in this country, I ate the most divine specialty of said country at this little hole in the wall place." In Italy, Gilbert also learns to let go of many things. She takes time to figure out what she wants to do, and doesn't really fill her time with a task, which is something that most Americans should do, in my humble opinion.

After living life to the fullest in Italy for four months, Gilbert goes to live in an Ashram in India for another four months. If ever there were two things that were more different, I couldn't tell you what they were. This is where Gilbert expects to find God and come to a higher understanding of divinity. And she does. She struggles the most in India, it seems, because she just doesn't want to let go of her inner torments, demons and self-destructive thoughts and behaviours. She meets many wonderful people at the Ashram, and while she was initially going to stay there for six weeks and travel India for the rest of her time there, she decides that her spiritual health demands she stay the full four months. I have to say, I really admired her in this part. She managed to be determined and laissez-faire at the same time.

Spiritual enlightenment achieved, Gilbert finally travels to Indonesia to end her journey in Bali. This is probably my favorite part of the story, because I feel like this is where she finally took the lessons she had learned and was able to live in her own skin for the first time. She learns how to be truly happy, and to truly love others.

At first, I wasn't sure how to relate to this book. I have never had depressive episodes like Gilbert describes, and I have never attained the highest level of divinity. I also couldn't figure out what I was supposed to be rooting for in this book. This is why non-fiction is so hard for me. Many times, there isn't a clearly defined plot, and I don't know how I am meant to approach the book. The Indonesia section really made the book for me, because this is where the author finally reaches her goal, which, while very tangible, is kind of hard to describe.

When I described the story to Corey, he said that believing a spiritual journey and a physical journey to be analogous was kind of an immature way of looking at things. I have to respectfully disagree with him. I think that Americans especially have a tendency to minimize our self-reflection. Unless we are faced with extraordinary circumstances, we have a tendency to just glide through life, never examining or improving ourselves. The author's spiritual journey started long before she travelled to these countries, and part of that spiritual journey was the recognition that she would not be able to grow to her full potential until she forced herself out of her comfort zone with the physical journey.

Even though this is not my favorite kind of book, I did enjoy reading this one. I can definitely say that this elicited a lot of strong emotions from me, and really did make me think about my own spirituality and my own life in ways that most books do not normally make me think. That being said, I definitely think that some people might find it difficult to relate to this book. My husband, for example, would hate it. And while I wouldn't go so far as to say that I loved it, I did really like it, and it did have an impact on my life, so I give this one a 4 out of 5. If you haven't read it, you should give it a try.