Book reviews: Eat, Pray, Love: One Womans Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, by Elizabeth Gilbert – Part 1

QUIRKY QUEST

Elizabeth (Liz) Gilbert has it all: at the age of 30 she’s already published three books, is an acknowledged journalist, popular with her friends, married for eight years to her long-term boyfriend, co-owner of a nice house in the suburbs of New York. The next item on the list is a baby. Yet, one night she finds herself crying and praying on the bathroom floor, she suddenly knows that she has to get out of the marriage and that a baby is out of the question. The divorce is a long, contentious affair and the passionate love-affair she begins during that time leads to a suicidal depression.

She loves the sound of the Italian language and wants to learn it so that she can converse freely. This is an exotic wish for someone who’s born into the world language No 1, why should an American learn a foreign language that’s spoken only in one country on the planet? – She knows an Indian guru whose teachings she follows in a circle of devotees in New York. – A journalistic assignment takes her to the island of Bali where she meets an old medicine man who tells her she’ll be back, learn his craft and teach him English.

What have all these events to do with each other? In order not to go under Liz decides to take one year as time out, she divides it orderly into three parts: four months in Italy, four months in India and four months on Bali. “I wanted to explore one aspect of myself set against the backdrop of each country, in a place that has traditionally done that one thing very well,” she writes. “I wanted to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two.” She lost nearly all her money in the divorce process but got an advance on the book she’d write. Eat, Pray, Love is the autobiographic account of her travels.

Liz Gilbert claims that her travelling skills are meagre, she’s tall and blonde, doesn’t blend well physically in most places (certainly not in the countries she intends to visit), she’s lazy on research and prone to digestive woes. “But my one mighty travel talent is that I can make friends with anybody. I can make friends with the deadIf there isn’t anyone around to talk to, I could probably make friends with a four-foot pile of Sheetrock.”

She takes a room in Rome, attends a language course, but drops out when she’s learnt the basics as she thinks she can learn more by talking to people directly. Not surprisingly, it doesn’t talk long until she’s accumulated a great circle