Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia

Eat Pray Love is Elizabeth Gilbert’s memoir of her one-year search to recover her equilibrium, overcome depression, and connect with her inner Divinity. She begins the story at age 34 when her aversion to having a child and continuing her marriage culminate in a nasty divorce, leaving her sobbing on the bathroom floor. Her ex-husband not only wants assets but also a portion of her future earnings. A passionate affair with a younger man, post-divorce, collapses when her lover retreats from her and she reaches “infatuation’s final destination—the complete and merciless devaluation of self” (22). Three things happen during this time to determine her immediate future: She signs up for Italian classes, meets her former lover’s guru during Tuesday evening chanting sessions in New York, and travels to Bali to write a story about yoga vacations where she meets the medicine man, Ketut. She sets out for a year of self-improvement “divided between the three destinations: Italy, India, and Indonesia, the three “I’s.” As a curious by-product, she discovers satisfaction in human love.

A skillful writer, Gilbert embellishes her tales with descriptions of people, places, and things so that the reader experiences her adventures alongside her. She moves easily within each culture, readily making friends, creating alliances, and attracting attention.