At 31, writer Elizabeth Gilbert had the awards, the husband, and the house she thought she wanted when she first waded into adulthood. How, she wondered, could she be such 'œa criminal jerk' to want out when the time had arrived that she was supposed to begin having children? At her low point, Gilbert found herself retching on the floor of her bathroom, offering her first prayer ever, 'œyou know,' she writes, 'œlike to God.' A messy divorce followed, leaving her dreaming of embarking on a yearlong, round-the-world search for inner peace. An advance from her publisher covered her expenses.
Readers may roll their eyes when they first learn that Gilbert's itinerary includes Italian lessons in Rome and apprenticeships under an Indian yogi and a Balinese medicine man, said Karen Heller in The Philadelphia Inquirer. But Gilbert is 'œabsurdly charming' both on and off the page. So even when she bans sex from her life and begins gorging on great pizza, she attracts new friends instead of wallowing in a 'œswamp of self-pity.' She also makes steady progress in her spiritual hunt, said Lev Grossman in Time. In Italy, she seeks and finds the pleasures of food, language, and 'œdoing nothing.' In India, she explores the concept of devotion, and though she sometimes 'œsuffers an addiction to cleverness,' her accounts of her struggles with Sanskrit and the discipline of meditation put you 'œas close as you can get to enlightenment-by-proxy.'
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