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Eat, Pray, Love
One Woman's Search For Everything Across Italy, India And Indonesia
by Elizabeth Gilbert


4.1

based on 12 reviews
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based on 34 votes
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After a divorce and a bit of a pre-mid-life-crisis, the 30-something author decided to spend a year trying to restore balance to her life by traveling solo to three places: Rome, India, and Bali. This book chronicles that year.

Viking, 352 pages
02/16/2006
$24.95

ISBN: 0670034711

Nonfiction
Biographies & Memoirs
Travel

All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...

Entertainment Weekly Jessica Shaw

Reads like a mix of Susan Orlean and Frances Mayes.

Booklist Donna Seaman

A captivating storyteller with a gift for enlivening metaphors, Gilbert is Anne Lamott's hip, yoga-practicing, foot loose younger sister, and readers will laugh and cry as she recounts her nervy and outlandish experiences and profiles the extraordinary people she meets [1 Jan 2006, p.48]

Library Journal Jo-Anne Mary Benson

A probing, thoughtful title with a free and easy style, this work seamlessly blends history and travel for a very enjoyable read. [1 Jan 2006, p.140]

Publishers Weekly

Sustaining a chatty, conspiratorial tone, Gilbert fully engages readers in the year's cultural and emotional tapestry - conveying rapture with infectious brio, recalling anguish with touching candor - as she details her exotic tableau with history, anecdote and impression. [21 Nov 2005, p.36]

The New Yorker

These destinations are all on the beaten track, but Gilbert’s exuberance and her self-deprecating humor enliven the proceedings.

Boston Globe Barbara Fisher

All those highs and lows that other people fall back on calling ''indescribable," [Gilbert] describes with intense visual, palpable detail. She is the epic poet of ecstasy.

Washington Post Grace Lichtenstein

She's a gutsy gal, this Liz, flaunting her psychic wounds and her search for faith in a pop-culture world, and her openness ultimately rises above its glib moments.

Los Angeles Times Erika Schickel

It is Gilbert's unreserved ability to relish that makes this such a delectable read. [19 Feb 2006, p.R7]

Salon Lori Leibovich

Gilbert is prone to hyperbole...and an excessive reliance on italics. She can be self-congratulatory and self-absorbed, which I suppose is an occupational hazard with a spiritual memoir like this. Yet Gilbert is also an irresistible narrator -- funny, self-deprecating, fiercely intelligent.

San Francisco Chronicle Don Lattin

Gilbert's writing is chatty and deep, confident and self-deprecating. She's a quick study and doesn't worry about leading readers down uncharted paths. That makes her work engaging and accessible but sometimes gets her and the rest of us lost in space.

The New York Times Book Review Jennifer Egan

Lacking a ballast of gravitas or grit, the book lists into the realm of magical thinking: nothing Gilbert touches seems to turn out wrong; not a single wish goes unfulfilled. What's missing are the textures and confusion and unfinished business of real life, as if Gilbert were pushing these out of sight so as not to come off as dull or equivocal or downbeat.

Kirkus Reviews

Gilbert's divorce and subsequent depression, which she summarizes in about 35 pages, are in fact more interesting than her year of travel. [1 Jan 2006, p.27]

The average user rating for this book is 4.1 (out of 10) based on 34 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

Gayle J gave it a1:
Too much whining about personal problems--who cares. Goes back to Barnes & Noble tomorrow.

Molly D gave it a10:
I loved Liz's journey so much that as soon as I finished the book, I had to read it again. Her honesty and thoughtful writing takes me with her on her journey again and again

Caroline S gave it a10:
This was the most fabulous book. Gilbert's writing makes it like you are on the journey with her. She is so real and an inspiration. I would recommend this book to anyone.

Suzanne K gave it a7:
Beginning of book was great; liked the Eat part, but it started to wane during the Pray and the Love just didn't do it for me. I found her writing increasingly annoying as it was too chatty - more like a blog or a journal. I didn't feel like it was worthwhile to go on reading at times since she seemed more shallow as the book progressed. Her info on Buddhism was not always correct. One of the main tenets of eastern religion is quieting not only the mind, but refraining from idle chatter - and this book was nothing if not idle chatter.

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Eat, Pray, Love One Woman's Search For Everything Across Italy, India And Indonesia by Elizabeth Gilbert

Eat, Pray, Love
One Woman's Search For Everything Across Italy, India And Indonesia
by Elizabeth Gilbert