THE LIBRARY - BOOK REVIEWS - EAT, PRAY, LOVE - DONNE TEMPO
Eat, Pray, Love
Reviewed by Cece O’Bryon-EnglandWhere today can you find an excellent travel guide, story of regeneration, and education on alternative meditative practices? In Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, "Eat, Pray, Love" (Viking), you can find it all as she seeks redemption through food, spirituality, and love.
Gilbert begins her year in Italy where her physical appetites are fed on the local gastronomic. As she learns the language, and meets new friends she commits herself to a year of celibate living. This is in juxtaposition to her appreciation of the earthly delight of eating.
Every town she finds herself in she asks a local for their best recommendation. She follows the directions of a vendor, and a fisherman, and her conversational companion. As such an intrepid explorer of food Elizabeth thus finds herself joyfully full.
After four months of sampling Gilbert continues on to India where she has reserved a spot as a spiritual seeker at an Ashram.
In the Ashram, led by a non-present female guru, she finds herself less suited to the austerity of the menu and the rigidity of the practices. Each day begins at 3am and ends at 9pm. Even the practice of celibacy is somewhat challenged by the presence of other spiritual seekers. Still, she perseveres and through four months of rigorous study finds herself able to meditate effectively.
This becomes a turning point as she realizes the control she can have in her own life. This portion of the book is also an excellent guide to the practice of yoga and meditation itself.
In the final four months of the yearlong sojourn Gilbert travels to Bali. She is there met with the challenge of becoming a part of the island culture. She also finds herself able to create changes in the lives of locals who become intimates. As she develops relationships, romantic and friendly, the possibility of love comes to the forefront; Gilbert explores the cultural differences that enable her to effect change as well as the assumptions that hold her back in this new arena.
Elizabeth Gilbert’s story may feel very familiar to many readers, the emotional struggles that continue to accumulate, the continued pull of an unfulfilling relationship, the utter despair felt when one knows they must be the agent of traumatic upheaval in their own life.
The reflection here is not always flattering, but it is relatable. This story, a true tale, in which one woman quests for redemption and reintegration, is the story of a woman, becoming the hero of her own life.
Through the arc of her flight, traumatic, drawn-out divorce, and later openness to love Gilbert patterns her novel on the 108 prayer beads found on the Hindu rosary. These pearls of wisdom are short and long, revealing and distracting, present and past.
What begins feeling like a work of fiction is a survival guide. Eat, Love, Pray is, the in the physical world, a travel guide to Italy, India and Indonesia. Elizabeth Gilbert experiences gastronomic delights in Italy, spiritual heights in India, and recognizes her true self in Indonesia.
This story of spiritual growth is an inspiration, and an education for all who are willing to take the journey.