The free books of England continue to get me in trouble. Perusing the racks of the book-exchange sections in my Tescos is such an easy commitment. It’s free books! There are no fees, you don’t have to return them. They can sit for ages on your bookshelf. You can even pick up the ridiculous overrated piece of white girl trash just to mock it and laugh and say “I am so much better than that!”
I am not better than that.
Eat, Pray, Love is divided into three parts, eat, pray, and love . Eat which details Gilberts travels in Italy where she eats pasta and learns Italian. Pray which covers her time at an Ashram in India, and finally there’s Love which takes her to Bali where she…well…loves.
Look I’m a white girl with a quarter life crisis who gave up a prestigious career to move to England and be happy and it was really easy for me to recognize myself in the book. There’s the eat-part covered – all English food is carbs and gravy. There’s the pray-part covered where I found that finding new friends while scrubbing temple floors in India is not so different from bonding with people over technology breaking down everyday. As for love part…well I’m still in the praying section (actually, scratch that. I’m still in the CARB-section <3 ).
It was just nice to recognize someone else’s travel experience. Still, this book is not good because it inspires you to leave everything behind and go traveling for a year, this book is good because it gives you the emotional catharsis without having to go anywhere. We all have people we’ve left behind, cracks in our heart that haven’t healed, people we invite in who then leave more cracks behind when we hoped they’d heal them instead. We’ve all cried on bathroom floors. Reading about someone else letting go allows you to let go, just a little bit, or maybe see some of your cracks in a different light. And sometimes it’s nice not to be so damn cynical all the time. Just do a bit of wallowing.
This book is not perfect. The prose is not always inspiring, there’s long sections of backstory that are not always interesting, and there are some cringing bits that definitely date this book quite a bit. And it is also a rich, white lady with the means to travel. The book has, and should be, criticised for this. The premise alone is so much ridiculous privilege that I can’t even. Still Gilbert was actually hurt and that pain was valid. Can you let go of your pain, by doing less? Of course you can. You can start by reading Eat, Pray, Love and letting Gilbert’s catharsis carry your own little heartbreaks away. Or you can move to England. They’re really good at carbs.
Your review of this one reminds me of my own experience with it a decade ago (oof) and my reading of The Holy or the Broken earlier this year. This book is much like “Hallelujah” for me, an emotional touchstone which cues us to emote, or allows us the space to do so. You are absolutely spot on that there is mych to criticize with this work, but it doesn’t have to lessen the emotional frankness Gilbert brought to it.
Also, I’m dying to know why you chose fried chicken gifs for this one.
Oh, I love your comment!
As for the fried chicken: it is one of the things that surprised me most about moving to England. I thought it would be all fish and chips and salt and vinegar, but it turns out the English are obsessed with fried chicken. It’s all we’ll ever eat on a night out and their love for it just never ceases to be endearing to me ❤
I would never have expected fried chicken to be such a thing in the UK. As usual, your gif game game is strong.
In our (English) family, the birthday haver gets to choose what everyone eats. There is no-one in my family who doesn’t immediately choose fried chicken.
I think this was one of those books that was hurt a lot by the hype and the fact that it was turned into a movie because that managed to overshadow all the good aspects of the novel.
She absolutely is privileged but seriously, if you can convince your publisher that a book about you traveling the world for a year would be worth the investment, then go for it. So I appreciated that she explained that it was still a bit of a work thing for her and she absolutely couldn’t have done this without that part. There was some time thought behind “rich woman leaves life behind.”
It is weird knowing that two of her books talk about the guy from this one when in real life they ended up divorced. Must be like seeing those “On this day” posts on FB and getting reminders of telling the world that the guy two exes ago was the one (which is why I never did – I won’t even do, “my mom/dad is the best mom/dad in the world” on their birthdays).
The first thing I did was look up the author to see what her life is like now. I think it’s a pretty great reminder that the truths of our lives are ever changing and there’s always something new to discover.