Eat, Pray, Love - Elizabeth Gilbert

My dad bought us a great gift a while back of leather bound, autographed books from great current authors. So far we have probably gotten about 60 of these books and the vast majority of them have been awesome. Every now and then a book that I wouldn't normally read comes our way. This is one of them. If I had picked this up on the book shelf and read the synopsis, I would have put it back down; I feel certain it was an Oprah book club selection. But that is the beauty of books coming randomly to your door, it helps you get out of your comfort zone.

Eat, Pray, Love chronicles author/journalist Elizabeth Gilbert's breakdown and recovery from a bitter divorce and a subsequent ill-fated affair. Gilbert is a successful thirty-something with a big house, a husband and all the trappings of a successful New Yorker. Instead of living the American dream, she finds herself awake and crying all night and unable to function during the day. After a protracted and mean divorce she decides to take a year off to recover. She takes whatever she has left from the divorce, puts it in storage and takes out on the journey that, as the title suggests, is divided into three parts.

She begins in Italy where, as you might guess, the eating part of the book is covered. In addition to gaining back the 25 pounds she lost during her divorce proceedings, she also fulfills a life-long dream to learn Italian. After a few months we move on to India for the prayer portion of the book. Here is where we find out Gilbert is quite the yoga and meditation devotee. She was planning to get her spiritual life back in order for a month, then spend the rest of the time seeing India as a tourist. However, she turns out to be more of a mess than she could imagine and spends the entire time at an ashram meditating and getting her head right.

Finally she heads to Bali to meet an elderly medicine man who predicted several years before that she would return to live and study with him. This part of the book ups the adventure level a little as she does not know where he lives or how to find him. And as the last part of the title suggests, love enters the picture.

Overall I thought the book was incredibly self indulgent. I really didn't feel much empathy for Ms. Gilbert, but I can see why the Oprah crowd would love this book. I have to admit there were parts I found interesting. To see a person be that open with her feelings and pain did suck you in at times. Also, many of the things she did sounded like fun and things I would very much like to do myself. I just couldn't get over the poor, rich, white woman from New York has a melt down and gets to travel the world for a year while people are losing their jobs, their homes or worse.