Customer Reviews

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

5 star:		(38)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(16)

 

 

I'll keep this review short. I couldn't even finish the book. Go whine somewhere else Elizabeth because I don't want to hear it.

Gilbert's adventures combine a challenging spiritual quest with dreamlike travel experiences. Her struggles with inner pain are real and gripping, while the exotic locales stoke the reader's appetite for more. She seems to mix it all very well -- inner growth, vocational renewal, and the best kinds of friendship. I just loved her Balinese friend Wayan.

Some people would consider this book spiritual tourism at its most escapist. But let me give one paragraph as an example of what Gilbert puts herself through:

"It took me a while to drop into real silence. Even after I'd stopped talking, I found I was still humming with language. My organs and muscles of speech -- brain, throat, chest, back of neck -- vibrated with the residual effects of talking long after I'd stopped making sounds. My head shimmered in a reverb of sound, the way an indoor swimming pool seems to echo interminably with sounds and shouts, even after the kindergarteners have gone home for the day. It took a surprizingly long time for all this pulsation of speech to fall away, for the whirling noises to settle. Maybe it took about three days."

I'm really glad to see this book topping the bestseller lists in North America, and I hope Gilbert's kind of adventure becomes the popular aspiration of the future.

We used this book to launch our first bookclub and I have to say that it was the most annoying book I have read in a long time. First of all this woman needs to see a therapist to sort out her narcissism. Her self-obsession in places such as India and Indonesia bordered on some kind of pathological sickness. When I first began reading the book I really did believe that some sort of real hurt would explain her 'pain' but came to realise that her 'pain' was human heartache. Most of us have suffered loss, heartbreak, grief and have felt the desire to run away from it all but we have real lives and so we grow up and accept our pain and carry on with our responsibilities. Not Elizabeth Gilbert - she lies on the floor and cries. She then goes off for a year to heal herself from walking out on her relationship. She pays money to go and clean floors in an Ashram in India - which must be the height of self indulgence. She learns nothing about the reality of heartbreak in India that might arise from having to send your young children to beg for food on the streets or making them go to work at the age of 10 in sweatshops or worse. She talks about learning to love herself as though that had been an issue for her. She did not learn anything about humility, grace or altruism. In her section where she raises money for the healer she becomes obsessed with how her 'gift' is used and implies that all Indonesians are really cheats and are trying to rob generous westerners. No old colonial hangovers there then. 4 out of 5 in the book club hated this book. One found it impossible to read, one agreed that she is a total narcissist and the other found her extremely annoying. We did wonder who likes this book and we wondered why. We had expected real growth and awareness. The book ends with her finding a man who treats her like a pet. The way she writes about him and their affair makes him sound quite creepy. Do not buy this book if you are looking for something with more depth than a sheet of copy paper. And the writing is not that great either.

I know millions of women got a lot out of this book, but I just couldn't find anything enlightening in it. The author was also paid in advance to have the spiritual experience she writes about, which made me doubt its sincerity. I did enjoy the food descriptions in the 'eat' part, though.

The best book of this genre is "Gift From the Sea" by Ann Morrow Lindbergh.

I looked forward to reading this book but couldn't get through "Eat", let alone "Pray" and "Love". I tossed it aside in disgust. I vehemently disliked the protagonist and couldn't care one whit about her self-indulgent journey. The message I got from the pages I managed to read was "when times get tough, take a year off, travel the world and focus only on your self", as though the average person has that kind of luxury or would really even want to do that. This book sums up, for me, what's wrong with modern North American society -- far too much orientation on self and "I'm worth it", and not enough focus on what's real and important. Eat, Pray, Love is, in my opinion, VASTY over-rated and definitely not on my recommended reading list.

This is the story of a self-absorbed woman getting over a failed relationship. She escapes to Italy, India and Bali in search of discovering some meaning to her life. Unfortunately, her experiences are not only entirely glib and mundane, they are written in such a cute and syrupy style that I finished reading the book only through sheer perseverance. I could go on about how this book can be seen as a reflection of modern individualistic society, but I digress.

I found this book utterly nauseating. A complete waste of time.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it refreshing that the author skipped the intimate details of the decay of her relationships and focussed on her own journey of self-discovery. Rather than finding her annoying or whiney, I thought she was honest and just laid it all on the table - the good, the bad, and the ugly. I also enjoyed it for the same reasons I enjoy travel - the simple act of stepping outside of your comfortable familiar surroundings and opening yourself out to new experience - often as a portal to improved self-knowledge. The characters she met along the way were fascinating, and some of their insights into the human condition enlightening. I feel she truly experienced the essence of each country and stayed true to her mission of finding her true character and discovery of her place in the world along the way. Finally, I found this book impossible to put down - a great read for anyone who considers herself a searcher or finds inspiration from spiritual journey and exploration.

This book is about one woman's journey to find God and a peaceful place in this world and the universe on the whole.

I was expecting this book to be filled with wonderful tales of travels in Italy, India, and Indonesia (Bali). It didn't disappoint. Although the book did discuss her physical and spiritual journeys, there was so much to these tales that I found myself laughing, crying and really empathizing with the authour and those lives she touched and relationships she made.

While I enjoyed the book I was frustrated early on in the book with how detached she was from reality and immature early on. So consumed with her own issues and blaming others for things falling apart, and not owning up to her parts she played in her marriage and relationship with her on again off again boyfriend David. She also didn't seem to see how lucky she was to be a published authour, to have cash advances on books she had not even written yet that enabled her to travel for a year and find herself. Not to mention her first completely paid for journey to Bali for a written piece on yoga retreats. So it was frustrating to see someone with these amazing opportunities that were not being appreciated and recognized appropriately. That sense of childish expectation and lack of maturity does improve as the book goes through, but it takes a while and that was a bit frustrating to have to endure as a reader who struggles with just handling day to day expenses and medical issues to see such gifts not being extremely appreciated and being humbled by the amazing opportunities that come with good health, friends, an amazing job that you love, etc...

I enjoyed Liz's writing style and the humour she puts into her writing. I will be reading her follow up novel,
"Committed". I found it hard to put the novel down, which is always a sign of a good book. I can tell this is one of those few books where I will re-read it many times. I didn't enjoy much of the Bali part of the trip early on. It wasn't until into got into Bali and she met a medicine woman friend that I started to like that part. I expected there to be more to it because Indian and Italy were such large chunks and so gripping.

One other really annoying thing not with the writing but with the publishing company, the paper quality of the book itself was very poor. It's thin and the grease from your skin marks the pages, which really annoyed me as I keep my books in pristine condition. So if you can get this book used it's worth it as it's too much to pay for a book whose pages will mark so easy. That's a publishing issue and I plan to send a letter to them about that issue I had with the quality of paper they used.

I rate this book 4/5 and plan to tell many strangers, friends and family members about taking some time to read this book. There's so much to be learned about yourself in the stories Liz describes. So take some notes and try some things and do a bit of research on your own and give yoga a try, meditation and mindfulness, etc... today!

After all the hype, what a total let down. This storyline (and the character) simply had no backbone. From the first pages, with no real reasons given, she's fed up and set on divorcing. And its downhill from there. I made it to Italy with her - but when I realised she would meet no one of interest, eat nothing of interest and overall do nothing of interest in fabulous Italy, I figured there was no way I was travelling on, and cut my journey short.

While I consider this book an interesting and entertaining read for any woman living an overflowing life, true appreciation, in my opinion, will come only to those who have "been there". This book was recommended to me by a close friend at a very dark time in my life. Quite frankly, it alone got me through most days. I am now rereading the book and I have a strange feeling that it will remain within arm's reach for many, many years to come. Is Eat, Pray, Love self-indulging? Maybe. Contrived? Possibly in some aspects. Representative of the roller-coaster ride that is depression and of the heart's fight to find its way out of the woods? You better believe it.