Jane Reads: Eat, Pray, Love

One of my passions is reading and very often I will re-read a book I adore over and over until the pages fall out. My very favourite book of all times though is 'Pride and Prejudice' but before I go off on a discourse as to why Charles Dickens had no right to say what he did about Jane Austen's writing I will just go ahead and delve into the book we are currently discussing.

Eat Pray Love: What a load of baloney!

First let me say that this is strictly my opinion and has nothing to do with the writer's talent. The fact that the book is a best seller then turned into a movie means that a whole lot of people disagree with me and enjoyed the book thoroughly. But this is also what led to my huge disappointment with this novel. (I also watched the movie and could not stomach it even though I adore Julia Roberts).


Eat Pray Love is a story about a woman who wakes up one day to discover that her marriage is not what she wants it to be and will never be, that she doesn't want children and probably never will and that she has been pretending all along. The realization shakes her to her core and she sinks into a serious bout of a deep, dark, depression that leads her to bawling on the bathroom floor every night, of course making her husband resent her because there is nothing he can do. One night in her deep despair a voice that sounds like hers and sounds like its coming from her speaks to her and tells her that everything is going to be all right. This voice eventually gives her enough self assurance to divorce her husband and move out of her apartment when she begins a self journey of some sort. She then meets another man and attaches herself to him like some sucker fish that never lets go and then realizes that this is not the answer and decides to seek her god on a spiritual journey to Italy, Mumbai and Bali .If you want a slightly more detailed summary than this you can check out http://www.wikisummaries.org/Eat_Pray_Love

My Take on the Book: The writer starts out by creating a deep tunnel into what it is to be a woman and society's expectation of us and whether or not we fit the mold and if we want to fit the mold. Then we hear about the main character, Elizabeth's woes of losing herself in what it was to be a good wife and how her identity is wrapped up in her husband and that she doesn't know who she is. Then she goes through this whole rigmarole of leaving her husband only to latch onto another man....then she realizes that she has done the same thing again and has lost herself in this new man. She is introduced by him to a 'guru' and is so intrigued by the woman that she decides to study at her ashram. Are you seeing the trend here?

The book was advertised as that of a woman's notes on her journey to love herself and find empowerment when all it ends up in is her latching onto another person. Elizabeth heads to Italy to please her tummy, kudos to her- she was doing something that she enjoyed and she had freed herself of the pressure of staying thin and keeping away from carbs and watching her waistline. Fine....but her entire trip to Italy was spent either eating or griping about something- why she was the way she was, why she was weak, how horrible she had been to her ex-husband for leaving him and the guilt that she felt about it even though she didn't feel any remorse, the fact that she couldn't learn the language as fast as she had wanted to, comparing herself to the women she met and saw, trying to figure out if anyone found her sexually attractive, feeling insecure as an American in Italy, feeling insecure about her height and her complexion and blah blah blah. At some points I got so sick of the whining that I had to put down the book.

Elizabeth would go from feeling wonderful about the architecture and culture around her to the floor of her apartment feeling like less than dirt, suicidal at times, reflecting on what she could have done differently to turn her life around. This whole second-guessing herself and guilt and insecurity follows her through Mumbai and Bali where she learns how to devote herself to the religious practices there. She struggles with the memorizations that she has to complete to move to the next level and though she accomplishes what she sets out to do she still doubts herself and feels like she cant attain what her guru would have her attain. She even has dreams about a man considered a spiritual master laughing at her and these dreams haunt her for the majority of her trip. Though her stomach and spiritual needs are 'filled' she still has a longing and a feeling that she is lonely and she still feels guilty for leaving her husband.

So of course, who can fill this need? A man! who she meets in the last leg of her journey when she finally allows herself to have sex. She falls in love with this man and travels to and from her home in New York City and their home in Bali and his home somewhere else as well.

This makes me mad. Soooooo mad, we learn nothing about who Elizabeth is as a woman. Apart from her struggles with depressions and her insecurities and her inability to concentrate and what she likes to eat we learn nothing. I did not feel the least bit empowered by anything I read in the book. The book opened by speaking about how women are nurturers and how we can be needy and when we find someone who will humour us we attach ourselves and make ourselves anything we need to be to please that person. Yes, Elizabeth went on a journey to please herself and yes she did find pleasure and enlightment but all she did was take a trip to end up right back where she was with a different man in a different place, who already had children and was too old to make anymore.
 She did not even commit to her religious practices as at the end of the book it was only something she did 'now and then'.

I feel like the book was a story about a woman's long-winded way to find what she wanted in a man and eat comfort food.... A very expensive way that she couldve used the money to feed a small country- no joke. I was very disappointed, I was expecting more substance and less whining.


Conclusion: There was some witty banter and places when I laughed out loud at the sheer silliness of Elizabeth and her quirkiness but apart from that....waste of my damn time and money. Sorry guys!