For those of you who don't know my old housemate Katie (words-that-dance.blogspot.com), probably the most important thing to learn about her is that she's great with books. The way you'd say about someone, "oh, they're so great with children" or "they're so great with animals" - that's how Katie is with books. She always has the best recommendations, and is my favourite person to talk to about something I've been reading, so it's always fun when we've both read the same book and can discuss it together. In the case of Eat Pray Love, I stopped dead in the lounge when I saw her reading it for the first time. This was a book I'd been meaning to read FOR-EVER, and here was my housemate, just sat in the lounge, minding her own business with a chocolate caramel digestive in hand, reading it. I had to steal it later, of course.
What I find interesting about sharing a book is how different people treat them. I always remember my brother telling me off when I was younger, not wanting me to borrow his copies of Harry Potter because he liked to keep them in pristine condition: no cracked spine, no folded pages, and definitely no pencil marks. I'm the opposite; I love getting into a good book, that feeling when the spine becomes loose, and folding down the pages of bits that I want to come back to - which is probably how we ended up with at least two copies of every Harry Potter book.
Luckily for me, Katie's the same, and so when I read her copy of a book, I find myself stumbling across little notes she's scribbled in the margins, or stars penciled next to her favourite paragraphs. As a result, my attention is immediately drawn to sections that Katie has liked, and often I find myself loving that section too. I'm still trying to work out whether that's because Katie's made me think about it that little bit more, or because it's just a really good piece of writing. What's even more interesting is when I love a section that Katie has also liked, but for a different reason. I know her well enough to draw parallels between pieces of writing and things we've talked about together in the past, so I can often tell when an idea in a book really resonate with something she's feeling. In some ways I think we're very similar people, but it's always fun when a quote resonates with us for different reasons, or resonates with different parts of our personalities. While the section that Katie enjoyed the most was Eat, I (conveniently) loved Love, so the following two reviews focus mainly on those two sections - and will hopefully inspire you to pick up the book as well.
Katie's review
Eat Pray Love is many things. It's a travel book, it's a book about self-discovery, about self-losing, about getting out a fresh piece of paper on which to write your life. To me, I see it as permission to do what you want and what you need to fix yourself.
It's a reminder that it's okay to have a 'crazy year'. That sometimes we just need to accept that we are going through what my housemates and I call 'the winds of change' (probably what is also referred to as a mid/quarter-life crisis). Basically where you suddenly realise who you are, what you are doing adn who you are with is not what you want, and you allow yourself some time to change that, however crazy your method may look to an outsider.
Gilbert explains it by saying that she 'sat down in the middle of the road like that and said in the middle of her life, "I cannot walk a step further - somebody has to help me". Using the analogy of the road shows how so many of us see our life as needing to constantly move forward or we will get run over. This book disagrees with that and says, if you need to take a year to go to Bali, or meditate in India or eat all the food in Italy to enable you to keep going, go do that.
The book starts with Eat which is a mixed up jumble of Gilbert on her first adventure in Italy and explaining her divorce and the events which led to his journey of self-discovery. Which I think is appropriate and echoes how I know I would be feeling if I went travelling to escape my life. Despite being in a beautiful unfamiliar city, filling up her brain with a new language and her stomach with pasta, thoughts of the events which led her to take this journey managed to creep in. And so the book reflects this.
It oscillates between the awful pain of her divorce and heartbreak and the sweet pleasure of Italiann food and basically makes me want to go to Italy and get super super fat and be happy.
Anyone who is even thinking that they should be counting calories needs to read this part of the book. You will popping garlic bread in the oven and boiling the kettle for pasta whilst buying a ticket to Italy before you even finish the first chapter. I swear. It will completely change your attitude to food, and you will never use the words "guilty pleasure" again.
In one chapter Gilbert visits Naples in search of the best pizza there, which she decides much in fact be the best pizza in the world. This chapter is an erotic to pizza. Like, I haven't even had this pizza and her description of it almost turns me on. My mouth actually physically salivates. Writing this blog post now I'm thinking, heck, what am I doing on a train to London when I should be getting off and running to Italy. And I am a skeptic who, when someone tells me something is the best thing ever I immediately expect the opposite. If you see Eat Pray Love in a bookshop, pick it up and read Chapter 27.
Gilbert's thoughts about visiting Augusteum are also a stand out part of this section of the book. Her thoughts about its continuing and perpetual existence no matter what purpose it is put to could be criticised for being too self-indulgent and self-centred but I argue, so what. By bringing her reflection on the building back to herself, it shows that when we travel, no matter where we go or what we learn we are really just learning about ourselves.
I have heard from many people who have read this book that they struggled with Pray. I also did to some extent, but then unlike Eat it is not supposed to be enjoyable, it is Gilbert's hardest chapter. She struggles a lot with her meditations in India, so it doesn't seem strange that it is the hardest to read.
If you are not in any way spiritual or religious, please do not be put off by this part of the book's title. What I would say is that what the whole book, but especially Pray and Love, communicated to me is the importance of spirituality, not religion, not the belief/threat of heaven and hell, but the belief that there is something in the universe which is bigger than you which you can put your faith in.
If I a criticism of this book, it is that by the end of the book, Gilbert meets a man and falls in love. I mean, I guess I can't really criticise this because that is just how her life happened. BUT, were this a work of fiction I would have liked her to continue being happy in her independence. I can just see this being held up as an example of how, to find the right man, you need to love yourself first. That shouldn't be the aim of a journey like Gilbert's - it should be the byproduct.
I would recommend this book to those who are:
Feeling: depressed, heartbroken, anxious, restless, uncertain
Going: to Italy, Bali, India, yoga
Thinking about: having children, or not having them, getting divorced, leaving uni, taking a gap year, dieting
Laurel's review
Eat Pray Love had been on my 'to-read' list for over a year by the time I got round to smuggling Katie's copy off her bookshelf a couple of months ago. My long-term boyfriend and I broke up last June, and at the time I happened to be doing an internship in London, which meant I was living alone in a Premier Inn for three weeks. I had a lot of free time on my hands and, aside from Love Island, there weren't many distractions, so as any typical English student would, I started compiling a list of books to read. Although I knew I'd never get round to reading them any time soon (the seemingly endless reading list for my upcoming final year at uni sadly took priority), I worked away diligently, searching for books that would hypothetically help me through this difficult stage in my life.
And - would you believe this length preamble does actually have a point - one of those books was Elizabeth Gilbert's famous memoir Eat Pray Love. Sold to the reader as 'one woman's search for everything', the book begins with the messy breakup of Gilbert's marriage, and proceeds to follow her year-long journey travelling the world in an attempt to find herself again. This is some seriously inspirational stuff, you guys.
Now, this would be a much more tedious narrative if I'd somehow managed to get hold of a copy back when I was in a similar situation to Gilbert (albeit a rather less devastating one, I might argue). Reading her story, young, heartbroken Laurel of summer 2016 would have felt uplifted and inspired, injected with a newfound hope that things would turn alright in the end and hey, if Gilbert can get through her divorce then I can sure as hell survive my breakup. In one of my favourite quotes of the book, Liz writes: 'The day is ending. It's time for something that was beautiful to turn into something else that is beautiful. Now, let go'. I've always found moving on difficult, and often get nostalgic, longing for a previous time in my life and looking back on it through rose-tinted glasses. Gilbert's perspective was exactly what I needed at a time where I was letting go of something really important - and what I've since come to learn is that just because something wonderful is ending doesn't mean that there is nothing left ahead of us that will be just as wonderful.
As it turns out, I didn't get Gilbert's perspective when I needed it. By the time I finally got round to reading the book, I'd long recovered from my break up and, instead of the inspirational narrative I'd expectantly carved out for myself, I read from a place of self-contentedness. I found my present self identifying much more with Liz at the end of the book than Liz at the start.
The point is, instead of needing the book to help me through a difficult time, I managed to do it on my own - and still had the book to read and reflect upon at the end of it all. Thus, in a way, Eat Pray Love acted as a reminder to myself of how far I've come, and I think that's why I loved it so much. Instead of looking to the person that Liz became as something to aspire to, I found myself identifying with both ends of the spectrum - and with the process as well.
I realise I've done a lot of rambling about my own life here, but if anything I hope that goes to show (aside from the levels of my own narcissism, perhaps) how deeply personal this book is. The most important thing to me, in reading a book, is the ability to connect with the main character (or narrator, in the case of non-fiction), and Liz Gilbert does this perfectly. It would've been easy for this book to have turned into an overly-inspirational preach, but Gilbert sidesteps that by being so damn relatable. She writes with honesty and openness, in such a way that you feel like she's your friend, sat across from you at the kitchen table nursing a cup of tea and telling you about her holiday, giving you advice about your latest dilemma and gossiping about the hot guy across the street.
I imagine the reason the book has had so much success is because people not only relate to Liz as someone they could be friends with, but also to the book as a sort of guide, leading you through a transition in life and instilling you with the self-confidence to live the life you want, full of hope and positivity. Even now, I still do spend a lot of time worrying (about anything and everything, really), but Liz writes: 'Whatever pain happens to us in the future, I accept it already, just for the pleasure of being with you now. Let's enjoy this time' - and in that, Eat Pray Love has helped me to realise that sometimes it's important to just let go of the worry, and learn to enjoy life in the moment.
I hope you will buy a copy of Eat Pray Love. I hope you will enjoy it as much as we have - and I really hope it doesn't take you another year to do so.
