| | Eat, Pray, Love |  | Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Publisher: Viking
Category: Book
List Price: $39.95
Buy Used: $3.04
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Avg. Customer Rating:  1758 reviews
Sales Rank: 1208263
Media: Paperback
Pages: 334
ISBN: 0739474189
Dewey Decimal Number: 920
EAN: 9780786553808
ASIN: 0786553804
Publication Date: February 16, 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: COVER HAS CREASES AND STAINS IN CVR TEXT CLEAN FAST SHIP
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| Customer Reviews:
 grow up September 17, 2007
45 out of 54 found this review helpful
Elizabeth Gilbert turns 35 during her year of self absorbed indulgence. Her time in Italy read more like that of a run away teenager eating, drinking and lusting for Italian men while missing the great opportunity to study the ancient civilization, art, religion and culture that exists in Rome. In India she talks obsessively about "her guru" (who we never meet) and the difficulty to unselfishly be introspective. Bali shows Elizabeth having so much sex she must reach for her collection of antibiotics. Her behavoir is immature and reckless. And, of course, she did all this on the publisher's dime - imagine had she genuinely taken this journey, kept diaries and THEN pitched it to her publisher.
 The journey has only just begun... July 26, 2007
44 out of 50 found this review helpful
As I sat at our bookclub discussion of this book, I looked around our table at each of our lives' journeys thus far (we are all in our 40s). Collectively, we have dealt with cancer, caring for aging, ill or early loss of parents, financial issues, dysfunctional families, children with physical or neurological challenges, etc. We are just ordinary girls who find strength where we can - through friends, faith, inner-selves and own self-worth.
I agree with the author that each of us has our own path to follow. Each path can be inspired by a variety of reasons and can be guided by a combination of experiences, religions, and thought processes - influenced from within or by anything around us. Not really sure what the cause of the author's depression was (there seemed no apparent cause)...which leads me to believe that this author suffers from inherent emotional imbalances or deep insecurities. This author's journey was laced with self-absorption rather than self-reflection...and there's a big difference between the two. I kept hoping the book would redeem itself - hoping that the author would find real clarity, and attain her goal of finding herself (and her self-esteem). Unfortunately, the book delivered the ultimate let-down in that she completed her search for "salvation" not through her meditation and closeness with the universe and God...but rather through the focused, one-way attention from yet another MAN in her apparently long and growing history of co-dependence. This may have even been okay - and a nice way to wrap up her year's journey - had there been any reciprocation of Felipe's focused efforts and physical pleasures. There was no intertwining of souls or culmination of her year's lessons encompassed into this new relationship. The relationship seems rather superficial actually (which, again, may have been okay if the book had been titled "Eat, Pray, Physical Pleasures"). Helping a Balinese family purchase a home was the only altruistic thing in this entire book that the author did for anyone other than herself...and not really certain how genuine that effort was (even though it was accomplished) based on the rest of the book.
What message was the author trying to deliver by writing this book? Did this book enlighten any of us within our bookclub? What will happen if Felipe leaves the author? Will she fall apart again? Will she cry endlessly about her "difficult" life? Perhaps her journey is not yet over...perhaps it has only just begun. Perhaps this book teaches us that the journey continues for all of us. Perhaps the author will write a genuinely worthy book of reading in another decade or two.
Why they hate our freedom September 27, 2007
44 out of 82 found this review helpful
"Eat, Pray, Love" is an almost perfect embodiment of everything wrong with America circa 2007, so it's fitting that such a tome has been so widely and indiscriminately embraced by aspirational post-yuppie women. An unabashed emissary of the culture of selfishness and the cult of the individual, our protagonist decides to dump her husband and "just take a year off," indulging in noncommittal and shallow adventures entirely divorced from any greater sense moral, ethical, or intellectual purpose. Forget that there's an illegal, undeclared war that's resulted in the deaths of thousands upon thousands of innocents, forget all people living a subsistence existence, forget all the people that have to work for a living - she's "just gonna take some time out for me." Remember when that meant simple and humble pleasures, rather than a year of non-working and unthinking vacation as lifestyle, with a little fake religion and fake nonthreatening indulgence thrown in?
Elizabeth Gilbert is the herald of a new age of crass, unthinking American indulgence and excess, truly a new low for humanity at large. When the next 9/11 happens, it will be because of people like Gilbert, living blissfully unaware of the the way that the rest of the world views their lifestyles, mentality, and condescending market/tourist mentality toward everything not in their backyard. "Eat, Pray, Love" is why they hate our freedom.
What the? November 9, 2007
44 out of 51 found this review helpful
So THIS is what all the noise is about? I guess I too could write a "memoir" about my trip to Italy and all my great meals and drone on and on about my ex boyfriend. The India section? Total impenetrable stereotype. Indonesia? Hunh? Another work from a moneyed, privileged NYC writer that makes women appear superficial. I'm embarassed to have bought this.
agreed December 4, 2007
44 out of 53 found this review helpful
I couldn't get through the first thirty pages of this book either. A year after I gave up on it (not just gave up, but was utterly exhausted, irritated, and distressed by it) the author is on Oprah in a room full of women who call "Eat Pray Love" their bible. I logged on to find out if I'm the only person who found Elizabeth Gilbert to be, well, self-absorbed, self-obsessed, afraid of her own company, unable to see outside of her own drama. I am relieved to have found so many similar reviews. It makes me sad that women cling to this book as some kind of instruction manual on how to find rightness in their lives. P.S. Ms. Gilbert makes the same impression on Oprah as she did in the book.
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