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| | Location: Home » Essay » Authors » Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia | August 20, 2008 |
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| Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia | 
 enlarge | Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics)
Category: Book
List Price: $15.00
Buy New: $3.00
You Save: $12.00 (80%)
Buy New/Used/Collectible from $3.00
Avg. Customer Rating:  (1614 reviews)
Sales Rank: 37
Languages: English (Original Language), English (Unknown), English (Published)
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.7
Dimensions (in): 8.3 x 5.4 x 0.8
ISBN: 0143038419
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.4
EAN: 9780143038412
ASIN: 0143038419
Publication Date: January 30, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
This beautifully written, heartfelt memoir touched a nerve among both readers and reviewers. Elizabeth Gilbert tells how she made the difficult choice to leave behind all the trappings of modern American success (marriage, house in the country, career) and find, instead, what she truly wanted from life. Setting out for a year to study three different aspects of her nature amid three different cultures, Gilbert explored the art of pleasure in Italy and the art of devotion in India, and then a balance between the two on the Indonesian island of Bali. By turns rapturous and rueful, this wise and funny author (whom Booklist calls ?Anne Lamott?s hip, yoga- practicing, footloose younger sister?) is poised to garner yet more adoring fans.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 1609 more reviews...
 A Triune Triumph... and Clever too! August 20, 2008
You've got to love reading to read this through and enjoy it. You have to appreciate her search for the right word to describe her positioning, the right word to describe a city, and her feelings. And, it helps to love geography, spiritual-seeking and psychological understanding.
I liked it plenty kiver-to-kiver. Clever travelogue-seeker concept. Lots of good writing and research. Interesting topics. Just plain charming and quite intimate and feminine in tone. I thought that the author's nailing-down-of-her-feelings and love of words was exceptional. She was trying to work out and convey a lot with her story and it hit the mark. This is the kind of book that could have bogged down plenty of times in 330 pages but it never did. The engine of personal purpose and constant events and changing geographies pulled it forward. If 100 people took the same trip, there would be 100 very different books. She wrote her book and I'm the wiser for reading it. For me, this book was well worth it, a provocative and charming read over a couple of evenings.
If you didn't like it, you didn't get it. August 19, 2008
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Several people I know have shared with me that they saw Gilbert as self-centered when they read this book. To them and others who feel this way, I must make the following points. First of all, you are reading a book specifically about a woman finding herself - do you expect it to not be about her? Second, the circumstances leading up to her year-long trip around the world were very telling of why her focus in this particular book is so narrow: she was trying to discover who she was as she was trying to pull herself out of a debilitating depression. Now, for those of you who haven't experienced this kind of self-doubt and helplessness, I am very glad for you. It is awful and not to be wished on anyone. The fact that she even had the desire to climb out of the dark hole that is depression and try to be proactive about her life again is entirely commendable and thrilling for me to see. So, when she goes on this trip, she is hoping to learn something about herself in each of these countries. She isn't claiming to have solved the world's problems or to have completely understood each culture, but she is taking the really good things from each place and incorporating them into her life, and in doing so is learning who she is and what she wants for herself. That is something that we all are and should be constantly engaged in. She has no illusions that everything about each country is all roses, that there is no poverty, corruption, prejudice, but that is not the topic of this book. It's really not a topic that you can begin to swallow when you are just getting your legs back under you. I found this book entertaining, inspiring, and a credible and accurate portrait of what it feels like to lose yourself and have to find it again. We may not all be able to travel around the world to do it, but I think that's why we are able to read such beautiful writing. She takes us to the places we cannot go. And I love her for it.
 Some slow spots August 17, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Overall I enjoyed this book (esp. the Eat and Love parts), but the Pray third can drag on.
 self absorbed... August 17, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
a self-absorbed portrayal of one year in the life of a woman recovering from a divorce. i could not get past the whining and one person pity party.
Book Review ??? August 16, 2008
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
After reading some of the reviews here I can't help but wonder: are we reviewing the book or the character? Who cares why she got divorced? What does that have to do with anything? Some people just can't separate their personal opinions with the characters in a book. I wasn't concerned with this woman's morality when I picked up the book. I just heard it was a good read and was interested in reading about this woman's journey. Would I have done everything exactly as she did? Nope. Would I have experienced the same exact emotions? Nope. But that's why I read books, to get out of my own head. To experience other points of view. Her views are valid and her story is pretty good. I felt the book was entertaining and worth reading. But if you're one of those judgmental, holier than thou types, you better stand clear. There's way too much about this character for you to pick apart (one of the things I liked best about this story was that it had a ring of honesty through it).
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