I am still in mixed minds about this book; people seem to either love it or hate it but I am somewhere in the middle. It follows a journey undertaken by the author after going through a difficult divorce and a difficult break-up. The book is separated into three sections: Eat details her time in Italy, Pray goes through her time at an ashram in India and Love covers her final leg of this journey to find herself in Bali.
I think the first leg of the journey in Italy was my favourite, it got a little too wishy washy for me after that. The book has been criticised for being too self-absorbed or narcissistic but I didn't really find it like that. The explanations at the beginning seemed to be just showing her reasons for taking this random trip around the world. I definitely don't think that she was asking for any pity or saying it was anything worse than what other people go through as has been suggested.
First of all the writing in this book was impressive, she took you on her journey every step of the way, with humour, sadness and all those other emotions. However, some of the claims to recall exact conversations with people kind of had me doubting the truth of the book. Unless the woman was carrying a dictaphone around with her in all her journeys and sexual experiences!? The conversations in the book were so detailed, they sort of reminded me of the conversational excerpts from A Million Little Pieces which were later found to be figments of the author's imagination. The other thing that annoyed me about this book is well it sort of irked my inner feminist and my inner atheist. It seemed like in this book, she divorced, rebounded, broke up with the rebound then immediately felt her life to be pretty empty and turned to God. I guess that may have been why I liked the first leg more than the others. She was independent, she relied on herself, she enjoyed food. It just seemed to me for a lot of the rest of the book there either had to be a higher power or a significant other. I rest in the truth that there doesn't have to be either and that dealing with being alone is a thing everyone has to face and overcome which she didn't seem to do.
At the same time, there were some impressive excerpts in this book which I wanted to shout to the world, paticularly in the first leg. Leaving a long-term relationship is really hard, and she did it with strength and tried to leave it behind. Again, however, the jump into a rebound relationship irked me a little. I guess what I did like is that she knew the relationship was not working and she got out of it instead of just remaining and being sad. The author has also been criticised for getting a large advance on this book before leaving on her trip. To be honest I don't blame her in the least, if I had the writing talent she has I would not hesitate to find something to fund my journey of self discovery. Seems like a good plan to me! She came through, published a book which has influenced a lot of people and that a lot of people have enjoyed so it was not like the money was undeserved.
Suffice to say, I think it's an intriguing read. It falls somewhere in the realm of a travel book, self help book or memoir. There are passages of the book I definitely think are impressive things that everyone needs to read.
Up next: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
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