Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

We women all know it but hate to admit it: Oprah Winfrey is the American goddess.
I confess: I read her book club recommendations verbatim. And they’re usually excellent reading. But not this one.

After a sticky divorce (aren’t they all?), writer Elizabeth Gilbert sets sail across the world to re-discover herself and achieve spiritual epiphany, including a several-month stint at an ashram in India.

I don’t see why she bothered to be in India, anyway, as she befriended a Texan and bemoaned all her crises to him the whole time she was there. And it’s not like you can’t wake up at 3AM and practice yoga in the States, if you really had any willful inclination to “find God”, or whatever Gilbert prattled on about ninety percent of the time. The other ten percent was her sobbing and occasionally shouting to the heavens at the injustice of it all. Oh, and there were some little bits about “seeing a blue light” and being filled with “blue energy”, which apparently cannot be found in America, because, you know, God isn’t here. Or maybe he/she/it is, but he/she/it is green. Or yellow. Or pink. Or something.

To be marketed as a ‘travel’ book is an utter lie. Rarely does the reader get to stop and enjoy the scenery. Rather, one is subjected to the endless nauseating rants and raucous outbursts of the author.

If you’re looking for a pat-on-the-back-reassurance that the world is okay, that the universe falls into perfect order, and that everything is going to be just fine, complemented by some one-dimensional sex and so-called ‘friendships’, then this is the book for you.

If you are actually interested in learning about India, then you will learn nothing from Gilbert.

Sadly, you will learn an unfortunate truth about Indo-American relations with regard to the phenomenon of American recreational travel.

I am disappointed by the number of people I meet who have been to India, and then manage to return and know next to nothing about the place. They complain about the music, the food, the poverty, the traffic, on and on. They can’t string two words together of a language other than their own. They have learned nothing new; they have no appreciation for where they’ve just been. They, like Gilbert, traveled to India with their own agendas, with preconceived notions about the way India should be; about the way the world should be. In return, they end up either disappointed or permanently clueless.

Gilbert is in the permanently clueless category.