Monday, December 5, 2011

mommy reads: eat pray love


as with any very popular novel there is a line drawn- people who love the book- and people who hate the book.  with me and epl- i would say i'm somewhere in the middle.  this is my 2nd time reading elizabeth gilbert's memoir chronicling her year long travels in italy, india & indonesia following her divorce.  the book begins with gilbert filing for divorce.  she never mentions the reasons behind her divorce (and they're no one's business but her own), but from the way she describes it, it definitely doesn't paint her in a good light.  she basically walks out of her marriage and into the arms of another man (that she meets after filing for divorce)- so basically she leaves her marriage without even trying to fix it, and rebounds into an even more tumultuous relationship.  basically, she's a walking disaster.  after her & her boyfriend split again, and she meets a medicine man while traveling for work in bali (who tells her she'll return one day)- she decides to take a year away from everything to travel- to italy to experience pleasure, to india to experience spiritual life and to indonesia to balance the two.  

gilbert is a wonderful writer- she's funny, self-depreciating, and she makes you feel like you're there with her experiencing everything.  her book is split into 3 books- italy, india, and indonesia, and each of those books is split into 36 stories.  in italy i'm dreaming of eating the pizza she eats and describes with such detail that you're drooling on the pages, in india, i'm feeling the frustration at reciting the gurugita, and in bali i'm falling in love.  gilbert really is a fabulous story teller, but sometimes you just sit there thinking "i don't feel sorry for you-  you got yourself into this mess."  other times you're thinking that gilbert must have the best luck in the entire world- and all the money to be able to travel (even though she was supposed to have lost it all).  the book is definitely worth the read for the story gilbert tells, but don't expect a life-changer.

the movie stars julia roberts as gilbert, james franco as david (her new boyfriend), richard jenkins as richard from texas, and javier bardem as felipe (her boyfriend/future husband).  felipe is actually in his 50's when he and gilbert meet (a father of grown children), yet bardem is younger than roberts...  the movie hit on some of the highlights of the book, but could never come close to telling all the stories.  it fell way short of the book, but not of my expectations b\c i honestly didn't expect much from it.

book 3.5/5.  movie 2/5

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