A nice concept book with several feel good moments, Eat Pray Love is an excellent book of self-help disguised as a memoir. Mrs. Gilbert ability to narrate is extraordinary and undeniable, but her obsession with details ultimately taints a story that does not feel long but lengthened. As I also read a comment from the movie trailer, I would define this book (hope I do not offend anyone by saying this) as the ultimate white woman book.
PLOT
Elizabeth goes through three countries to find herself, first to recover her apetite, then to find devotion and finally to find a balance between the two of them. There comes the title Eat/ Italy, Pray/ India and Love/ Indonesia. That is exactly what she does in each country with all the necessary (and sometimes uncalled for) details.
I will not go into so many more minutia of this journey. All I have to say is that Gilbert begins her journey because of her solitude and instability, her inability to maintain a healthy relationship, finding ways to understand herself and her environment, helping others along the way, hearing different life stories, still she decides to end up the book (therefore her journey) by starting a new relationship (it's kind of paradoxical, isn't it?).
STRUCTURE
The memoir is narrated in past tense as Elizabeth recounts her life as she travelled the country where she embarked on a peregrination to redefine herself and the meaning of life.
I think one of the many problems with this memoir is the divergence of writing styles. It is true that it's important to vary the way we narrate but this has to be consistent, but that's what I felt with Mrs. Gilbert novel, sometimes she is too realistic, other times too matter-of-factly, too surreal, too magic realism influenced, too try-to-be ethereal, too cynical, etc. Her personality is never defined and not because of the metaphor of change or the illusion of development.
THEMES
We have too many themes in the novel, and that is another of its biggest flaws. Besides that, I've read several criticism on the inaccuracy of what is portrayed, it makes me feel disappointed. I read too many facts that I considered were just filler for the pages, stories that were not truly necessary. It is unquestionable that her writing is impeccable, her capacity for detail very vivid, but some sobriety would also be thanked for.
It felt disappointing that the author admitted that she went through this journey to write the book and not the other way around. Obviously, money really inspires. It makes me feel deceived. I am under the perception that she victimized herself too much to be enjoyable for readers and that all her moments of lucidity were just a fabrication to appear much more otherwordly.
ABOUT THE ENDING:
The ending is absurd to me. After the supposed experiences that Gilbert went through, after so much struggle and learning, starting a new relationship seems to be like the worst way to find clarity and it sends a mixed message about independence, selflessness and strength.
CHARACTER: 4/10 (the characters were just too happy or sublime that they felt fake and I was unable to connect to either of them)
PLOT DEVELOPMENT: 5/10
THEMES: 5/10
GRADE: Difficult reading
Comentarios
Publicar un comentario