Finally, a book that I loved. Rarely will I read a book that makes me forget where I am and how much time has passed. Gilbert's writing is so beautiful that you just want to curl up in it.The book is Gilbert's memoir of a year of travels in Italy, India, and Indonesia. Following an emotional divorce and the end of a subsequent relationship, Gilbert devotes herself to the pursuit of pleasure (mostly in the form of food, in Italy), spiritualism (in an ashram in India), and devotion (by working with a medicine man and finding love in Indonesia.) I found the India section a little more tedious than the other too, but that mostly had to do with the fact that it was heavy on the spiritualism side rather than it being any less carefully written. All of Gilbert's stories are entertaining and show tremendous insight.
I feel like a lot of writers get into trouble with memoirs because they tend to be overly dramatic, whiny, or just self-indulgent (one of the reasons why I hated A Million Little Pieces.) Gilbert is open with her emotions in a way that doesn't reveal everything, and looks back on them from a place of growth, rather than trying to make the reader feel sorry for her. Her sense of humor rounds it all out. I mourned this book when it ended, but I felt like I also learned a lot from it.
Rating: 5 out of 5
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