Eat Pray Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert (PDF)

Description

One of the most iconic, beloved, and bestselling books of our time from the bestselling author of City of Girls and Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert.Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love touched the world and changed countless lives, inspiring and empowering millions of readers to search for their own best selves. Now, this beloved and iconic book returns in a beautiful 10th anniversary edition, complete with an updated introduction from the author, to launch a whole new generation of fans. In her early thirties, Elizabeth Gilbert had everything a modern American woman was supposed to want—husband, country home, successful career—but instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed by panic and confusion. This wise and rapturous book is the story of how she left behind all these outward marks of success, and set out to explore three different aspects of her nature, against the backdrop of three different cultures: pleasure in Italy, devotion in India, and on the Indonesian island of Bali, a balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Eat, Pray, Love is very explicitly a prepaid writer’s journey for an entire year where she tries to heal from a painful divorce. She has no children, and her job IS to fly around the world writing about things. It is important to understand this up front. I find that people either love this book or hate it, and often their feelings revolve around this one fact. Detractors feel she is “spoiled” for going off to Italy, India and Indonesia to be on her own. That is what she does! Ths is her job. It is like complaining that Steve Irwin jetted around playing with animals, and did this on his vacations too. If someone has this as their normal lifestyle, and they are actively paid for this, then being jealous or upset that they live this way seems unreasonable. We are hearing notes from a person who DOES live this way. It would be the same as picking up Steve Irwin’s book about going around and interacting with animals. To complain that he should have stayed at home makes no sense. It is not who he is. It is not who Elizabeth is.So, that being said and understood, let’s look into this year. It’s always easy to throw stones at other peoples’ lives. As has been said many times, those who live in glass houses should avoid stones – and he who has no sin should throw first. All of us have made mistakes. All of us have regrets. Elizabeth has ended up in a marriage with serious faults. She does not describe the issues – which I greatly respect! Many women would have turned this type of book into a vent-fest where they skewered their ex. If anything, Elizabeth makes much of her husband’s patience and doesn’t go into his faults. To complain about her tact in this area seems petty.Elizabeth honestly doesn’t want kids. That is fine! Only people who REALLY want kids should have them. A look at the child abuse statistics bears this out. So for whatever reasons – mostly unmentioned – she and her husband break up. As a result, she spirals into a deep depression and is at the point of suicide. She is seeing a therapist and it is not helping. She is on medication. It also does not help.So finally she formulates a plan to get away. Remember, this is a woman who does travel writing *for a living*. It is not an abnormal thing for her. She loves the Italian language. She loves yoga. She had met a medicine man in Indonesia. So she gathers her things and heads out.Italy – land of long, leisurely walks, of delicious comfort food, of a friendly openness. I know many people who ADORE Italy and return there frequently. Yes, it is a land of fiery emotions, and some people live in poverty. You can find similar conditions in most countries. She begins her stay here sickly and worn down. Slowly she begins to repair her physical health and starts to make connections with others. She begins to explore a little and find pleasures in the basics of life.Next, India is where she explicitly goes to an Ashram (retreat) to study yoga and medication. People who are interested in yoga very often do this. Again, to complain that she doesn’t “see outsiders” when she is at a yoga retreat seems baffling to me. The purpose of going to a retreat is to rebuild your own spirituality. It is only then that you can help others. When they tell you in an airplane to put on your own oxygen mask before you help a child, it’s not because they’re callous. It’s because otherwise you both could die. She slowly learns how to deal with “monkey mind” – a VERY common issue with westerners who meditate, who cannot get their mind to let go of their worries. It is only after several months that she can meditate without strong negative, painful emotion.Finally, Indonesia is where she learns about balance. She gets a sense of how people work in a community, how they support each other, how they heal the physical and mental and spiritual together.Now, I have phrased this review a bit “defensively” because I really think some of the people who “hate” this book do so because they think it is wasteful for a person to spend a year “taking care of themselves”. They feel a depressed writer should just ignore the depression and do … what? Open a kindergarten? Elizabeth WAS a travel writer. If she had just “gone back to work” she would have been doing something very similar. A past job had been to go to Indonesia to write about yoga for several weeks. Is it really any “worse” that she went to India to write about yoga for several months? She was after all paid in both cases to do exactly what she did. The only real difference is that with this book part of the criteria of what she wrote was to include her personal feelings, which if anything is far more difficult (and risky).Some people have an issue that she HAD serious depression. Is this going to turn into a Tom Cruise rant on how women should not be depressed or affected by changes in their lives? Many women DO get serious depression and are told to just “deal with it”. Depression is an extremely serious medical issue and should never be dismissed or ignored. Elizabeth was on medication, she had a therapist. If a “change of scenery” was key to helping her recover, then that is fine – and quite normal. For people who say “well my life sucked worse and I dealt with it” – again, perhaps those people do not understand what depression is caused by or how it works. It is demeaning to people who do have serious depression to say “just get over it” or “I don’t think your life warrants depression, so you don’t have it.”If you completely ignore the content, I think Elizabeth’s writing style was brilliant. I downloaded a sample 20 pages on my Kindle and was laughing out loud at several statements in the book. I promptly went and bought the entire thing. There were many, many sections in the book where her descriptions were vivid, her dialogue was crisp, her observations were right on. I love her writing style.Now that all being said, I do not say that this book is flawless. In a way it is like reading Valerie Bertinelli’s book. Both women are open about their mistakes. Neither woman is perfect. Elizabeth takes on a lover before her marriage is dissolved. Certainly this is something men AND women have been doing for centuries, but it is not a wonderful choice. Being a planner-type myself, I found Elizabeth’s way of just randomly launching into travel without knowing what she’s doing rather disconcerting. She gets to Indonesia with no idea of where she is going or how to get there. Also, some aspects about the ending of the story bother me, but I do not want to give anything away.While others found her self introspection to be too much, I found it normal for a memoir. If you’re writing a memoir, you are by definition writing about yourself. People read your story to learn how you felt and thought – and it SHOULD be different from how they would think! If we all just read about “our own thoughts” the world would be a boring place. It is important to learn and grow and understand how people different from ourselves interact with the world.I think it is very difficult for Americans in particular to “let go” of a hectic pace. In Europe people routinely take vacations of a month or more. In the US, people race away for a weekend, and bring their laptops with them. They have kids and then pile their schedules full of karate lessons, soccer games and play dates – when more and more studies say that kids (and adults!!) need quiet time to just “be free”. I honestly think we all COULD use an entire year off from our current life, to spend time on our own, away from our stress and schedule. Look at many cultures were people live a far more relaxed, easy way. Often they have far less rates of cancer, diabetes, heart attacks and other issues. Stress and cortisol are causing modern people huge health issues.So to summarize, I think part of why this book is so popular is that it draws out such strong feelings in people. Readers feel jealous of Elizabeth’s ability to travel. They feel upset that Elizabeth “wastes” a year traveling without feeling “guilty” about not volunteering at a nursing home instead. They feel annoyed that Elizabeth’s personal memoir talks about her personal feelings rather than writing a social treatise on poverty in the slums of India (which she wasn’t near). They feel morally upset that she left her marriage without laying out in explicit detail for public review why the marriage failed. They feel an ovarian outrage against any female would not actively leap at the chance to bear children. They feel religious fervor at anybody who would approach the worship of God without going specifically through a priest and Jesus Christ. Whatever was the trigger for someone, I think that trigger is an important idea to meditate on – because there are MANY people who feel the way that created that trigger. To be able to try to understand them in this no-holds-barred book is incredibly valuable. If your decision is to just close the book and turn your back, that is the attitude that causes cultures to still clash all over the world. How much better if we could really learn to understand each other, forgive each others’ mistakes, accept that we all have different views and at least get some small sense of where people are coming from.I am not saying we all have to approve of Elizabeth, or follow in her footsteps. However, I feel she makes many extremely important observations, and explains them clearly. She is speaking out for a large group of people. To at least understand her is to take steps towards understanding people you have to interact with in your daily life. To do this healthily and maturely can really be beneficial long term – for them, for you, for your social group, and for your community.For that reason, well recommended.

⭐This was a fun read to escape into a good story except the author had strong political opinions she put in this book… she seemed to say it like she assumed everybody had the same views. I thought it was arrogant on her part and it took some of the magic away from the story which sucked. If you can get past that then it’s a good read.

⭐This is, by far, my all time favorite book. It meant, and still means, so much to me, especially as a woman. I was a single mother for most of my now adult daughter’s life, and I was so desperately sad and lonely after my divorce with my husband/her stepdad (Our wedding, which was obviously well pre-planned, ended up being on the day of Princess Diana’s funeral (9/6/1997) and our divorce was finalized on 9/11/2001 (yep, THE day)…There’s my “sign”… Anyway, several years passed and I still just couldn’t see a future….of anything, happiness, travel, love, ???…(other than going through the motions and working on being the best mother I could be)…I too, was 36 years old at this time. When my daughter was old enough to have a stable relationship with her biological father, I would have every other weekend alone. I used to go to the bookstore “Borders” every Friday night and I would walk aimlessly around the entire store, just looking for any sign, the next sign for the next move, for me… I prayed and prayed constantly, just not knowing what or where I needed to be… with my physical life, my spiritual life, my love life, my motherhood… and then I looked up. On the top shelf of the “newest releases” I saw the cover of “Eat, Pray, Love”… I INSTANTLY felt a “pull” if you will… Now normally, I would wander, grab a few books, & find a chair hidden in some lonely, quiet little alcove in the store, and sort through the items I’d selected to see if anything could help or just give me SOMETHING, ANYTHING for HOPE…but I grabbed this book from the shelf, read the back cover, ran to the checkout line and left the store to go home. Within reading the first chapter, I immediately found it gravitational, humorous, very easy to follow and read…. very spiritual, and somehow, someway, emotionally compatible and conducive to exactly what I was needing at the time. You instantly understand where Elizabeth Gilbert is coming from, what she’s going through, and even her “fantasies”, all with humor, compassion and a desire to continue “the journey with her”. I was hooked. Every chapter, I was laughing, crying, dreaming, planning, petitioning, praying, and laughing again. Every chapter held me captive in all of my senses. You can feel everything she feels, you can taste everything she tastes (even her tears), you can see what she sees, you pray what she prays, her friends (and enemies) become yours, and you get to the end, and you’re a different person. It’s like the book emanates and “energy” right to you and through you, and you are left feeling HOPEFUL, alive, ready, stronger, wiser, more forgiving of others, and most importantly, yourself. You learn that they way you lean into and love God is between the two of you and no one else….that what you can’t necessarily see, hear or touch, doesn’t mean it isn’t FULLY there, fully present with you, in all It’s Glory. I’ve read it 7 times, all on different occasions and throughout different phases in my life…After months of reading it, when the next Christmas Season rolled around, I bought 13 copies and gave them to all of the closest women in my life. I’m now only a few months shy of age 48 (years young) and I’ll read this book again and again…every time I read it I learn something new about the world, others, and myself…all through this amazing woman’s courage to take a chance on simply sharing all of herself for one, amazing, adventurous, incredible year… what a gift. You’ll never look at Italy, India, and Indonesia, with all of it’s bounty, glory, and gods, the same again. I’m forever grateful and HIGHLY recommend this book. Oh! And 1 year ago (after 2 years of dating) I got the courage to say “Yes!” to the man of my dreams. 🙂

⭐Off the back of SO MANY recommendations, I bought this book.Its a “chick-flick” type story, not my kind of genre so I’ve not enjoyed it.The book is split into 3 segments each consisting of 33 chapters. Each chapter is very short, some not even a page, so it’s not a huge book.Part 1 talks mainly about how much the protagonist loves learning and speaking Italian, and how much she wants to get off with her Italian language tutor, and how much weight she has put on.Part 2 gets a bit better only because of another guy giving her a reality check, otherwise it covers mostly how she can’t get out of her own head.Part 3, haven’t made it to this part yet. Haven’t finished Part 2 yet. Book is still sitting unloved on my shelf waiting for the end of the world to come and destroy it so I don’t have to continue reading it.Or I could put it in the compost bin…

⭐I recently read “The Signature of all Things” by this author and, having adored that novel, I decided to seek out more of her works. I had heard of this book but know nothing about it – guessing it might be a novel or a self help book. Before I started reading I did some research about the background and was particularly interesting in the funding story (turned out to be a great investment!)The idea of travelling in order to “find yourself” always seems attractive, particularly to middle aged women.Initially I found the memoir difficult to engage with. The author is in her thirties and I though she was trying to use this as a barrier to readers. I also found her chaotic thought processes quite complex to work through. What kept me reading through this was the gorgeous descriptions of sights and emotions. I’m not a religious person but strongly acknowledge a spiritual side of the world which seems to escape understanding – this book made me confront that and think a lot.At one point, the author describes that her spirituality interests her sister from a point of “intellectual curiosity” which I can understand and think this is how I approached this whole book.During the year, Elizabeth Gilbert visits Italy, India and Indonesia. In each place she looks for different experiences, all working towards giving her some contentment with her life. I struggled with the transitions between countries as they seemed to happen very swiftly. Overall, I found that I was never really given the chance to properly understand the author and gain any deep understanding of her motives – I think I~ would have preferred this book to be three separate volumes.What I did love was the open minded way that the author approached everything that came her way and the accessible way in which she described her experiences. I partly envy her religion as it does seem the means to a wonderful way to approach the world and everything that is thrown at you.Throughout the book there are all sorts of little gems which I am trying to remember to make me a better person.I may recommend this to some friends but will be very careful who I select. It took me a long time to read this book which is an indicator of my enjoyment.

⭐Like many others I had my reservations about this book – a pretty, blonde white girl is given a free pass to chuck her first world issues. She gets to travel for a year – all expenses paid – by her editor in exchange for a book about her said travel year. I quote Scrooge from A Christmas Carol (or Scrooge McDuck from Ducktales depending on your taste) “Bah, Humbug!”But as It turns out, this book is pretty awesome!Gilbert is disillusioned with life and disappointed in love, she travels to the three I’s:Italy – where she eats, India – where she prays and Indonesia (Bali) where she finds love.It’s as simple and yet as momentous as that. You’ll either read it and chuck it across the room or read it and come away with something profound for yourself. Liz is a gifted writer, I have ear marked, highlighted and underlined the heck outta this book.I suspect many would secretly love to do exactly what Liz did (I would), but cannot due to commitments, responsibilities and budget constraints.That’s perhaps why there are so many bad reviews, I get that, I understand. But maybe instead of reading it with your defences already up, try reading it like it’s fiction. Be open minded and give it a go.

⭐I bought this after listening to Chris Evans on Virgin Radio rave about this book. It sounded like the type of genre I like to read (and I generally have liked other things Chris Evans recommends). However, I had to give up about a third of the way through after trying to persevere. I found it quite dull after a while and drawn out. I have read much better life changing adventure stories. Sorry Chris….I have to disagree with you on this one unfortunately.

⭐Saw Elizabeth Gilbert on “Loose Women”, ordered the book and looked forward to reading it. I’m really sorry, I just don’t get it.. I hate not finishing a book but having got through her Rome months, mostly spent eating pizza, I started on the India section and put it aside…no point if Im not enjoying it. It’s not a travel book, it’s not a story, it’s more of a diary. Rather self indulgent and if I’m honest, utterly boring.

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