Am I the only person who hadn’t read "Eat, Pray, Love"?

With the film version of Elizabeth Gilbert’s best selling novel coming out later this year, I thought I had better read the novel. Yes, I must be one of the few women over 35 in the English speaking world who had not read this novel. Talking to my friends I get the impression that many have read it, not necessarily because they were drawn by the blurb on the back cover, but due to the strong influence of word of mouth. Let’s face it, peer pressure to be in the loop is a strong seller of any product. Somehow I had managed to avoid being dragged in to the “rip” as I had heard that the novel wasn’t so much a story of Gilbert’s travels as her journey in finding “God” and this sort of subject is not really my thing.

In succumbing to the pull of conformation, I have to say that I have mixed emotions about the book. I found the first half which covered Gilbert’s marriage breakdown, divorce, and subsequent trip to Rome for four months engaging, sad, and the philosophical discussions on beliefs and life fitted in to the story well. Similarly, the last quarter of the book, where Gilbert returns to Bali to for fill the prediction that she would return which was made by a Balinese medicine man she had met on a previous visit, was suitably broad in content to keep me reading and thinking about some of the ideas that she was putting forward.

However, Gilbert just about lost me in the beginning of the second half of the book when she goes to live in her Guru’s Ashram in India. There is a lot of background on the faith system that is practiced in the Ashram and I felt that this part of the novel lacked the depth of story about the people and environment in which she was living - something that characterised the other parts of the book. I suppose the problem was that the Ashram is an enclosed environment, and this part of the book covers four months in this environment. I felt that there wasn’t enough substance to warrant the number of pages devoted to it. Needless to say, I did find this section of the book a little “preaching” in tone.

For those who would like to continue Gilbert’s story where she left off at the end of Eat, Pray, Love, the sequel Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage is out now.  Would I recommend reading Eat, Pray, and Love?  Yes, if only to be part of the conversation which is sure to arise over dinner with friends when the movie comes out. Although, I suppose you could cheat and just go and see the movie.