Eat, Pray, Love- Finale (possible spoilers)

I finished Eat, Pray, Love recently. Overall I enjoyed the book and found things in it worth considering. The last section on her time in Indonesia was involving. I was looking forward to it especially after reading the title for that section: "36 Tales about the Pursuit of Balance." Balance is something that I am focusing on in my own life: balance between school life and personal life, balance in where I put my energies at school, balance in terms of being centered and thoughtful in my life. The balance the author is seeking is between pleasure and spirit, or as she put it "what I want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God." While she seems to find some sense of this by the end of the book, I found a sense of let down as I finished it. In part I found the focus of her quest distracted by romantic developments (will she or won't she), though that is certainly one form of enjoying the world's delights. I also would have enjoyed more at the end about her return to her "regular" life. Pursuing pleasure in Italy and God in an ashram in India are one thing (or two?), but bringing what she learns back to modern day life in our culture would be quite another.

Eat, Pray, Love-Italy & India

I'm two-thirds through the book now. The first section was enjoyable as it was centered on her time in Italy. It also was the part in which she outlined the struggles she was having before she began her quest/journey. That part was more painful. Her tales of Italy spoke of incredibly delicious food prepared with love and deep care. It made my mouth water.

For a fiction book to work for me, I have to buy into it through the often referred to "suspension of disbelief." If you can't suspend the disbelief, you keep pulling yourself out of the story and thus the story does not really work. It loses its power, it casts no spell. With memoirs it seems something else has to suspended. Cynicism and/or being judgemental perhaps? To embrace a memoir fully I have to be open to how the author is experiencing things. I mention this as I process the section about India in the book. Her experiences in the ashram are different in many ways from my life, just as she, as a person, is different in many ways from me. Yet as the book progresses, I find myself noticing more and more the connections between the author and me rather than the differences that I focused on earlier in the book. While her journey is not mine, I am drawn into her experiences and her revelations. I use them as a lens through which to view my own experiences.

Eat, Pray, Love

At the top of the pile on my bookshelf is Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, subtitled One Woman's search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia. I intercepted it as it was being passed from one person to another. My daughter-in-law finished it while we were spending the holidays in the Smoky Mountains together. She offered it to my husband, knowing that he regularly meditates. It is a book I have been wanting to read. I heard the author interviewed a couple of years ago on NPR and on one of my favorite podcasts, KCRW's Good Food. So I took temporary charge of the book.

So far I am in the Italy section of the book where she explores the pleasure of food, the Italian language, and a culture that values pleasure. Her overall desire voiced early in the book is "what I want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights, but also devote myself to God." That seems an interesting challenge. After Italy I will follow her to an ashram in India and to a medicine man in Indonesia. It promises to be an interesting journey.