Afer years of glancing at Elizabeth Gilbert’s ubiquitous 2009 bestseller out of the corner of my cynical eye, I had a “What the heck!” moment in the Sally Ann the other day and invested my 50 cents in a pristine paperback copy.
Someone read it, because it’s dog-eared here and there, but its crispness tells me they only did so once, with care, before boxing it up for giveaway. It’s going into my giveaway box in much the same condition; I’ve decided to abandon it in the first third of reading; we’re still in Italy with Elizabeth making mildly lustful glances at the twin brown-eyed Italian boys she’s supposed to be learning conversational Italian with.
What can I say that hasn’t been said? For every one gushing reader who swears this thing has changed her life (and interestingly enough, most of the online commenters are female), there seems to be another in full sneer mode. Love it or hate it, the book has sold in the millions, so Liz Gilbert (as she styles herself on her self-promotional website) isn’t about to get too bent out of shape by her detractors.
I took a deep breath as I delved in to the thing – “Be fair”, I cautioned myself, “maybe you’ll find it life-changing, too” – but sadly I am immune to whatever magic so many of my fellow middle-aged sisters have found therein. My spouse can rest quiet in our marital bed – I told him this and he took it with his usual stoic aplomb; he’s well-used to my book-inspired monologues; the bait has to be tempting indeed to get him to engage – undisturbed by a restless wife yearning for more inner fulfillment than she’s already getting living her modestly interesting life in her modestly comfortable home in her modestly beautiful and not very exotic part of the world. No guru calls my name alluringly across the ether; no gorgeous lover is waiting in the wings to open his arms if I do decide to take my departure from my marriage; no $200,000 advance is sitting in my bank account to finance my escape to Europe and the trendier bits of Asia.
Aha! That last bit’s the real rub, I think. And it got me thinking about “manufactured” memoirs, of which there are a fair few out there, and their spin-master authors, who’ve convinced their publishers to finance their travels, in order that they can collect material to weave into some sort of palatable narrative to woo the stay-at-homes with vicarious “it could be me” dreams.
Nice work if you can get it, and in this particular case I’ll be leaving our Liz to it. I’m sure she won’t be sobbing on the bathroom floor if she catches wind of my dismissal, no worries there for either, provider of vicarious thrills and judgemental sometimes-consumer of the same.
Is it a real memoir if someone’s paying your way to collect material before you even set out? Don’t you need to include that bit in the narrative? Many do, and their dialogues with their backers can add considerable interest to the tale, and win us over because we utterly get it, and are cheering the traveller on.
Eat, Pray, Love is just too coy about its true background for me to feel the love. The author is too shifty-eyed; it doesn’t ring true, and didn’t before I found out about the advance. I felt vindicated when I learned of it; my gut-reaction reluctance to buy in suddenly made perfect sense.
Your thoughts, as always, are most welcome, whichever side of the Eat, Pray, Love divide you find yourself on.
I have never been tempted to pick this one up, and thank you for your reinforcement of that decision! π
Wow, I love this posting. Reminds me of the Hans Christian Anderson’s “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. Your words resound heartily with truth, and I think many women who drank the Kool-Aid on this book and said their lives were changed by it, etc., are probably wondering why they ever fell for this palaver. So many strange trends and fads for a time and then people see them for what they are. Oops. Thanks for the post.
On a tangent here, I have always worried about a book that someone gets paid to write, before they know anything about the subject. I prefer books in which the author already knows something, is an expert, is a voice we recognize, and THEN gets paid to write about it. When someone is paid to have the experience and then writes about it —boo! They rarely have any ring of truth.
Your review is delicious. I was never tempted by book or movie, I was turned off immediately by the subject.
Tosh will be the appropriate word. I can feel myself oozing cynicism and I haven’t even been near the book!!
I forgot to say that it was also deeply boring, which was the ultimate deal breaker. Otherwise I would have kept reading, albeit probably snarking all the way. π The saga, or at least the saga up till the part where I bailed, is all me, me, me, I, I, I.
No one’s navel needs to be *that* hyper-examined. I’m sure Gilbert’s problems are real enough to her, but I couldn’t relate to a lot of her angst, and her prose isn’t dynamic enough to let me forget the abundant whininess interspersed with self promotion. And what’s that term we use? “Humble brag”? Gilbert’s the one trick pony of that category, too. Oh, yawn.
Yes, not a fan.
I’m not sure where or why I picked this up, or why I tried to read it… according to my review, I enjoyed the Italian third well enough, but the pretentiousness started to increase as if it had been hit with the Gemino curse and I quit somewhere early in Bali after the umpteenth miraculous occurrence.
π
Hey – I’m trying to find *your* review and it’s not working – can’t find a search button on your blog page. Am I missing it somewhere? π
I haven’t even heard of this book, and I’m feeling quite superior about that now!
Oh, my! Lucky you! It was *everywhere* over on this side of the Atlantic. Overflowing bookstore displays, spin offs and targetted merchandise galore.
I started reading this dreck because somehow TWO copies had inserted themselves into my house. (Probably friends who just wanted to get it out of their lives, and so slipped it in among my books when I wasn’t looking.)
You held on for a third of the book?? Wow. I bailed after about three chapters.
But still, felt obliged to go over to Goodreads and leave a 3 word review. “Whine, whine, whine.”
Yup, yup, yup. π
I wasn’t tempted by this one but sometimes I like trying books that are so successful just to see what the fuss is all about. (that’s how I read 50 Shades of Grey which made me want to throw at the writer’s head all the feminist manifestos I could find because I’ve never read anything so degrading for a woman’s brain.)
So thanks for taking one for the team and for your review.
Ah, 50 Shades of Grey. I browsed a copy once in a bookstore, way back when it first came out and everybody was nudging each other about it and giggling like schoolgirls and whispering “Oh, naughty book! Must read!” It failed the poor writing test during my test browse, never mind the demeaning premise.
What irritated me most of all about this book (and I haven’t even read it) is that my husband went out and bought a copy rather than getting it from the library.
Did he read it? If so, what did he think of it? Or did he buy it for you? I suspect it was “gifted” to many during the highest point of its immense popularity. When in a Vancouver used book store a few years ago, there was a whole box of these outside on the doorstep with a “Free!” sign on them; the market was obviously saturated at some point; I paused for just a moment but didn’t stoop to take one.
He didn’t buy it for me, he knows better, LOL. My husband did read it. His opinion: “Stupid, badly written, ego-centric, should have been titled Me me me me me.”
Ha! This made me laugh. My recollection was that I did know about her advance, or at least that she was being paid a significant amount of money to do her travels — are you sure she doesn’t mention it? I really thought that she had!
Anyway. Doesn’t matter. Perfectly fair for it not to be your thing. I read it before it became quite so wildly famous and enjoyed it, but I haven’t reread it since then. Probably wouldn’t hold up, honestly. :p
We get occasional copies of this in the charity bookshop where I volunteer, and I always pick it up and look at it (because of all those rave reviews) but I’ve never got beyond the first page, so I think you did very well!
Bravo, much more succinct than I. When about to rant, now I can direct others to your blog. I had to read for a book club, I was pissed off when I realized I’d paid for it.
[…] like the ΓΌber-ubiquitous lifestyle-bestseller of twenty years later, 2009’s Eat, Pray, Love (which I have to admit I bailed out on without finishing just a few months ago), is one of those […]