Book Reviews

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia     

by Elizabeth M. Gilbert

I purchased this book based on the positive reviews I read and a few recommendations from friends.  On the surface, it was an interesting read about a woman’s spiritual journey to find her way to a new life.  She travels as a writer to Italy, India, and Indonesia enjoying and writing about her experiences.  The writing is good and the story is easy to follow.  Included in the story are bouts of humor and tragedy.  All are, of course, examples of good storytelling.  Nevertheless, by the middle of the book, I began to question the heroine’s thought process.  It seems that instead of finding herself, she is merely running away from real life.

I thought the protagonist in the book Eat, Pray, Love was a self-centered woman who cared for nothing but finding her ideal life.  Her disregard for her responsibilities in favor of her wants left me doubting her character. She could not stay married, she would not have children, she, she, she!  Her perspective focused on only how she felt and seldom on others. Did she really need to travel the world to find her life’s purpose?  As Dorothy says in the movie, The Wizard of Oz “… if I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard; because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with.”  This book is a great lesson for the “me” generation wannabes.