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Eat Pray Love | 
| Author: Elizabeth Gilbert
Publisher: Penguin Paperbacks
Category: Book
List Price: CDN$ 18.50
Buy New: CDN$ 9.25
You Save: CDN$ 9.25 (50%)
Rating:  33 reviews
Sales Rank: 15
Media: Paperback
Edition: 1
Pages: 352
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.6
Dimensions (in): 8.4 x 5.4 x 0.9
ISBN: 0143038419
Dewey Decimal Number: 910.4
EAN: 9780143038412
ASIN: 0143038419
Publication Date: January 30, 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.ca
If wisdom could be traded like currency, author Elizabeth Gilbert would be a wealthier woman by far, though it's likely her fabulous memoir, Eat Pray Love, racked up a few bucks during its stay on the New York Times bestseller list. What Gilbert imparts in her story--basically, bracing self-knowledge acquired during a year of travel following a bitter divorce and a shattered rebound romance--is at once astounding yet totally obvious. As Gilbert would attest, albeit more eloquently, the most important stuff in life is pretty much under our noses, but we occasionally have to shake ourselves senseless in order to see it (enlisting a guru and a medicine man are highly recommended). Take this simple but devastating observation posited while Gilbert was on the final leg of a global tour. "I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man, rather than with the man himself, and then I have hung on to the relationship for a long time (sometimes far too long) waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I have been the victim of my own optimism." Ten million women are smiling wry smiles and nodding their heads in agreement (men too, probably, but the book has a definite female skew). Such emotional bulls-eyes are hit early and often in Eat Pray Love, each seemingly more poignant than the last. Alternately funny and heartbreaking and always deeply resonant, Eat Pray Love, takes the reader on two epic journeys - one through Italy, India and Indonesia and the other deep inside Gilbert's intense psyche. Charles Montgomery's towering The Last Heathen: Encounters with Ghosts and Ancestors in Melanesia notwithstanding, travel memoirs just don't get any better than that. --Kim Hughes
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| Customer Reviews: Read 28 more reviews...
 Ranting Tale April 13, 2008
Toni Osborne (Montreal, Canada)
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
Driven to despair by a punishing divorce and an anguished love affair, Gilbert is left in a state of depression. In an attempt to get her life back on tract she goes to Italy to learn the language and revel in their cuisine, to India to meditate in an ashram, and to Bali Indonesia to reconnect with a healer that she had previous contact with.
This novelist journalist chronicles her intrepid quest for spiritual healing throughout her year of travels, documenting a memoir of her journey and experiences in order to find balance in her life. Not everyone will relate or agree in her methods. Gilbert's over descriptive narrative can be boring at times as she talks a lot about nothing. This book is shallow and superficial, a ranting tale of a self absorbed person running off and escaping reality in the hope of finding oneself in other cultures. This may appeal to dreamers and rich immature adults wanting a reason to escape; very few have the luxury to travel the world for a year. Is this fiction or fact? I find it hard to believe it received so many positive reviews.
Narcissism at it's Best March 28, 2008
Sheila M. Kerr (Montreal, Quebec.)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
After all the reviews and hype I was anxious to read this book. I liked the title and thought it would be interesting to go along with the author's journey of self discovery, but as the voyage progressed I found myself drowning in her expression of self love, self importance or in physchoanalysis terms 'regression into adolescent sexual behavior'(webster's dictionary) If the story had been edited into half or two thirds of the length it might have worked. While some passages were quite poetic and lovely, they were few and far between. Geneally I found it too narcissistic, self absorbed and egocentric.
Authentic personal journey March 24, 2008
K. Harrison (BC Canada)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found it refreshing that the author skipped the intimate details of the decay of her relationships and focussed on her own journey of self-discovery. Rather than finding her annoying or whiney, I thought she was honest and just laid it all on the table - the good, the bad, and the ugly. I also enjoyed it for the same reasons I enjoy travel - the simple act of stepping outside of your comfortable familiar surroundings and opening yourself out to new experience - often as a portal to improved self-knowledge. The characters she met along the way were fascinating, and some of their insights into the human condition enlightening. I feel she truly experienced the essence of each country and stayed true to her mission of finding her true character and discovery of her place in the world along the way. Finally, I found this book impossible to put down - a great read for anyone who considers herself a searcher or finds inspiration from spiritual journey and exploration.
 The popular aspiration of the future February 28, 2008
Brian Griffith (Toronto, Canada)
8 out of 8 found this review helpful
Gilbert's adventures combine a challenging spiritual quest with dreamlike travel experiences. Her struggles with inner pain are real and gripping, while the exotic locales stoke the reader's appetite for more. She seems to mix it all very well -- inner growth, vocational renewal, and the best kinds of friendship. I just loved her Balinese friend Wayan.
Some people would consider this book spiritual tourism at its most escapist. But let me give one paragraph as an example of what Gilbert puts herself through:
"It took me a while to drop into real silence. Even after I'd stopped talking, I found I was still humming with language. My organs and muscles of speech -- brain, throat, chest, back of neck -- vibrated with the residual effects of talking long after I'd stopped making sounds. My head shimmered in a reverb of sound, the way an indoor swimming pool seems to echo interminably with sounds and shouts, even after the kindergarteners have gone home for the day. It took a surprizingly long time for all this pulsation of speech to fall away, for the whirling noises to settle. Maybe it took about three days."
I'm really glad to see this book topping the bestseller lists in North America, and I hope Gilbert's kind of adventure becomes the popular aspiration of the future.
Insightful............ February 15, 2008
J. Furigay (GTA, Canada)
4 out of 5 found this review helpful
I thought this book was well written. It's nice that someone like me, personally can relate to someone who has experienced depression, anxiety and just plain stress. Kinda makes me wanna learn how to meditate and take a year off to travel the world.....hopefully i'll get the chance to do that someday
I didn't realize the cure to depression was sex after all...damnit....
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