Eat Pray Love - Meh

I jumped on the bandwagon and read Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert which was recently made into a motion picture starring Julia Roberts.  I picked it up because I heard good reviews about it.  Well, by "heard", I mean I saw some friends' updates on Facebook about how thankful they are for this book.  They are the same friends that constantly post about how things have been so horrible in their lives but no matter because they have faith in God.  Blah blah.  I don't have anything against any religion or personal beliefs at all, but I find the people who post stuff like that suspicious.  Should've known not to trust them.  Let's just say I now think we should no longer be friends.  Or I should hide their feeds at the least.

I always like to read travel books, and since this book takes you to 3 countries, I thought that I'd find it interesting.  But after a few pages in, wow is this author self-absorbed!  I know it's a weird thing to say about an autobiography of sort.  The book is about her search for God or some kind of higher power, so naturally it is about her personal struggles and findings.  But even knowing that, she still comes off as a pretty vain individual, I don't even know how that's possible.  She tries to sound cute and funny but whatever story she was describing always circles back to her and she found every opportunity to show how much she'd done in her life, how many places she traveled to, how easy it is for her to make friends, and how she always manages to get a boyfriend.

***The following may be a spoiler if you plan to read the book.  But I'd suggest borrowing it from a friend if you must.

At the beginning of the book, she recounts a period of her life during which she was so depressed and was crying every night in her bathroom because of her failing marriage, amongst other things.  Oh, but she won't tell you why because it's personal.  Wtf?  You have to give your readers SOMETHING.  That was about 10 pages in.  Then she talks about how things got so bad that she moved out of her house and immediately started living with some yogi named David who she was madly in love with.  Ok, so we can pretty much assume that she cheated on her husband.  Her husband was so upset about whatever happened that we are not supposed to know, that he refused to sign the divorce papers, even when she offered him every financial asset that *she* provided during their marriage, she was quick to point that out.  She's so upset and depressed, and this dragged on for years, as well as for page after page after page!

Finally, things were not going well with David, but he did introduce her to his guru in India which gave her the idea to go there and live in an ashram.  But she didn't leave until her publisher offered her a huge advance for writing this book.  Even then, before she goes to India, she had to make a pit stop in Italy for a few months to indulge herself.  Ok, Italy has many religious ties.  However, she doesn't visit one single church or museum or anything to experience the culture.  All she did was eat pasta and gelato and gained 23 pounds.  But she also quickly pointed out that most of that weight were supposed to be gained because she was underweight from her years of depression.  Spirituality through gelato, I guess?!  She was also learning Italian, and had hot Italian twin brothers as language exchange partners.  She really wanted to kiss one of them, but she had always had one boyfriend after another her whole life since high school and decided to impose celibacy on herself.  But she was also constantly think about about David, and her ex-husband.  I was so bored at this point and was pretty much skimping through the pages.

Finally she got to India, but she didn't talk about India at all!  It was all "me, me, me".  She made some friends there, but all her conversations with them involved: how do I quiet my mind so I can meditate, what went wrong with the ex-hubby, is David my soulmate, etc. etc.  Seriously is this what one thinks about while searching for God?  No wonder she didn't make much progress the entire time she was there.  The passage in India felt like reading something written by a teenage girl.

At last, she arrived at Bali.  Must admit this was my favorite part of the book.  Because she actually did write some things about Balinese culture and people.  Though I felt her vision of the "Balinese culture" was very skewed and probably not the true representation.  Here again, she was supposed to be learning spirituality from a medicine man.  He was an old man who spent all his days curing all these poor villagers of different ailments, sometimes didn't even have time to eat, but at the end of his days she made him teach her how to find God, meditate, and be happy.  No consideration for the poor old man.  That really annoyed me.

Then she made a good Balinese friend who was so poor that she was about to become homeless with her 4 children.  So the author did a very nice thing and asked her friends and family to donate money to the Balinese woman to buy her a house.  After getting the money, all of a sudden this Balinese woman was portrayed as a con artist because she wasn't planning to buy a house before the author left Bali - the time frame was only a month or so and even she admitted that real estate is very tricky in Bali.  So the author and her Brazilian lover (she is now no longer celibate - in fact she was having so much sex that she got a urinary track infection... LOL!  By the way she is 35, not 15) decided to trick the Balinese woman by making up some story about taking the money back, so that she would hurry up and buy a house.  LOL!  This was comical.  I didn't understand why the woman had to buy a house before the author left Bali.  It wasn't a pre-existing condition for giving her the money, so why not let her take her time. 

Ugh, anyway, at the end of the book, I thought that she really didn't advance much as far as finding God.  In fact, it just proved her own point that she ended up with a man.  I can see the whole cycle repeating itself when her relationship with the Brazilian goes downhill.  The whole time I read this book I was hoping she would have more insightful things to say.  I guess maybe I'm just jealous because I wish I could get $200k advance and go travel for a year, but I really think that I would actually take the time out to learn more about the places I go to and people I meet. 

I wouldn't say this is the worst book ever, but it was rather disappointing.  When I was reading it on the train ride to and from work, I was kind of embarrassed and consciously hid the book cover, lol.  I respect the author's personal problems she faced, but she sounded like someone I would want to stay far away from in real life before she drowns all her problems on me.  I picture her as someone who pretends to listen to you when you have a "conversation" with her, but always reverts back to talking about herself.  It's too bad because the premise behind this book is great, I just wish it wasn't so painful to read!  I'm annoyed that I helped fund this venture.