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.
Critic Reviews
|
Outstanding
|
Entertainment Weekly Jessica Shaw
Reads like a mix of Susan Orlean and Frances Mayes.
|
|
Outstanding
|
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]
|
|
Outstanding
|
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]
|
|
Outstanding
|
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]
|
|
Favorable
|
The New Yorker
These destinations are all on the beaten track, but Gilbert’s exuberance and her self-deprecating humor enliven the proceedings.
|
|
Favorable
|
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.
|
|
Favorable
|
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.
|
|
Favorable
|
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]
|
|
Favorable
|
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.
|
|
Favorable
|
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.
|
|
Mixed
|
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.
|
|
Unfavorable
|
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]
|
|
