Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert Review: Is it Worth Reading?
Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert is a memoir of one woman's year-long trip through Italy, India and Indonesia. I had this book on my TBR for a while, and I knew nothing about the story.
When I picked it up a few weeks ago, I went in completely blind... without an inkling of what it was actually about. Turns out Elizabeth hit rock bottom after a brutal divorce and an equally messy rebound relationship. So, she decided to rebuild herself from scratch and structured an entire year full of trip.
The book took me a few pages to actually settle in. It turned out to be a breezy memoir that lost me somewhere in India. I gave up reading it after around 40%
My Rating:
❤️❤️❤️❤️🤍
A breezy memoir that lost me somewhere in India.
Check Eat, Pray, Love on Goodreads
What the Book is About
The book is about Elizabeth Gilbert’s year-round sabbatical. She took a year off... four months in Italy, four in India and four in Indonesia.
In Italy, she chases pleasure and language, eating her way through Rome and Naples and finally learning to just enjoy things again. In India, she moves into an ashram to chase devotion, spending her days in meditation. And in Bali, she goes looking for balance.
At its core, it's a memoir about self-discovery and personal transformation. And it’s built on a very simple question of what it takes to feel like yourself again after everything falls apart.
What Works?
The Italy section is what I liked the most, by far. Her descriptions of the places, the streets, the little everyday corners, felt like being shown around by a local. And the food, god, the food... every meal made me hungry right along with her.
It was amusing to read her adventures there too, watching her figure out the language and the culture in real time, even when she was clearly having fun with it on the page.
Funnily enough, while she was busy learning Italian, I found myself craving to learn Korean again. I’d abandoned it a few years back, and I ended up signing up for an online course (still ongoing). That's the kind of effect this book had on me.
Some parts of the writing felt quite stupid, and other stretches felt genuinely spiritual. And I guess, that mix is part of what kept the Italy leg so engaging.
What Falls Short?
Italy was all fun... and then came India. And things started dragging for me. The ashram sections turned into daily accounts that didn't give me much to hold onto, just routines, repeated routines. It didn’t had the same spark, same attraction for me that kept me engaged with the Italy chapters.
Every now and then, I also felt she was trying a bit too hard to "create" a joke out of a situation. It happened in the Italy’s adventures, too, but it got harder to ignore once the pace slowed down.
And I gave up on the book somewhere in there, a little over 40% in. I wasn't especially invested in the memoir as a whole; it was really the Italy leg of the journey that kept me engaged. Once it was gone, I was done knowing more about Elizabeth.
Maybe it's because I wasn't expecting self-help lessons going in. I’m not sure. But the shift from travelogue to daily spiritual progress wasn’t something I was interested in.
Who Should Read It?
If you're interested in a memoir of a woman, and her journey of self-discovery and personal transformation, Eat, Pray, Love would be an excellent read. It's an easy going book with a mix of food and travel. It’s also worth picking up if you’re going through a tough time in life, you know, after a breakup or a divorce, or anything else actually.
Final Thoughts
Going by everything I did read, I liked Eat, Pray, Love overall. Its breezy travelogue with food writing keeps it refreshing, and the Italy section alone makes it worth the pickup. I just wish the India stretch had kept hold of me the way the first act didStill, it’s a good read for anyone interested in reading about self-discovery.
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