Eat Pra...ok you're getting on my nerves

I tried. I really did.  A big part of me really wanted to enjoy Eat Pray Love, truly. The other part of me secretly hoped i'd hate it.  On one hand it seemed like a good book to read when going through a rough patch and facing a sizable transition.  On the other hand, I felt like this memoir is a really small step away from being a self help book, and if I did seriously enjoy it, would I immediately be put in the category of people who think that reading about a strangers trials of loss and love gives them some sort of real life wisdom.  Can one find inner happiness by reading about Elizabeth Gilbert's "search for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia"?  Maybe some people can, but all I found was a high level of annoyance mixed with a serious desire to tell this broad to stop her whining.

I get it. Divorce is tough.  But how many pages do you have to talk about crying on the floor, or drowning in your sea of depression and sorrow? Obviously this was the set up for the rest of the book, a way to show how down and out she was before she embarked on this courageous journey to find herself, and to show just amazing it was that the clouds parted and she was, shocker, able to find love again (I actually didn't make it that far in the book...i'm just assuming by the whole "love" part).  I understand that it needed to be said, but seriously? THAT much?  Within the first 30 pages I wanted to yell at her for being so stupidly selfish and tell her to go talk to some people with real problems, put things into perspective.  As it continued I just found myself getting more and more frustrated.  I couldn't stop thinking 'what is the god damn problem, Liz?' Her editor finances a one year...let me repeat ONE YEAR trip around the world and all she does is piss and moan. While in Rome, on her editors dime, eating whatever she wants, and doing whatever she want, which is exactly what she wanted in the first place, she paints a picture of this weird almost sorta victim -- like i'm going to feel sorry for this chick?

As much as she irked me in Rome, she really started to make me angry when she got to India.  All the details are fuzzy, being that i've been averaging maybe a half chapter a week since I got here (I could only deal with about 3 pages before I started thinking about writing her hate mail) but the whole part about her climbing some tower and having a fake conversation with her ex husband, who was still in  NY, sent me over the edge.  I'm really sure you did that Liz, i'm really really sure you climbed up some tower and had a conversation with your ex husband, and you found closure. And then you did a hand stand. No. I don't buy it.  This was one of those things that goes into a story when someone already knows they have a book deal.  I can see it now...Liz G...just sitting there trying to figure out how to make the book more appealing and whimsical for her audience..."oh i've got an idea...i'll say i climbed a tower and spoke to my ex through telepathy and then i'll say I did a handstand...that'd make me sound super enlightened."  That is when I'd had enough, right around the 60th 'bead'.  

The only redeeming quality of this book, for me, was Richard, the character from Texas, who may have been fake as well, but at least she did a good job concocting his quotes and intricacies.  Although I did not enjoy it, I do want to say thank you to my step dad for getting this book for me. I know I expressed interest in reading it, and it was very thoughtful of you to surprise me with it before I left, so thank you.  That aside, I would like to say to all the people who enjoyed this book and encouraged me to read it (Emily) I will most likely never take book suggestions from you again.  Finally, I will now find someone who is trying to learn English, and give this book to them as a gift, not only for their practice of the language, but maybe, just maybe it will be more to them then it was to me, after all, I obviously am in the minority for hating it.