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Elizabeth Gilbert is the author of the blockbuster 2006 memoir Eat, Pray, Love. Her ninth book, the new memoir All the Way to the River, explores her stormy, codependent relationship with her friend and lover Rayya Elias, who died of cancer in 2018.
‘The Summer Book’ by Tove Jansson (1972)
In this slim, magical novel, a wild young girl and her equally wild grandmother spend the summer on a remote Finnish island, using adventure and creativity to heal from loss. Never has childhood girl power been more eloquently expressed. I call this my favorite book nobody has ever read. Buy it here.
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‘The Little Locksmith’ by Katharine Butler Hathaway (1943)
This vivid memoir tells of how spinal tuberculosis, diagnosed in childhood, threatened (but failed) to limit the scope of Hathaway’s big, imaginative life. Despite being literally tied down for all of childhood and in pain for all of adulthood, Hathaway lived a grand, artistic, and even sensual existence. Buy it here.
‘The Awakened Woman’ by Dr. Tererai Trent (2017)
There is no easy pathway from rural African poverty, illiteracy, and early marriage to a doctoral degree in America—but in this memoir, Trent shows how she created that path for herself, with relentless drive and the guidance of her ancestors. This is the truly heroic journey of a woman I admire more than anyone else I’ve met. Buy it here.
‘Matrix’ by Lauren Groff (2021)
Plenty of women in history have been sent to convents as punishment, but in Groff’s brilliant and muscular novel, the 12th-century mystical poet Marie de France takes that banishment and turns it into might, becoming a leader who transforms her convent into a hidden world of creativity, prosperity, and autonomy for all women. Buy it here.
‘How to Say Babylon’ by Safiya Sinclair (2023)
Raised in the crushing patriarchy of contemporary Jamaica, Sinclair fought back against the limitations of her father and her Rastafarian culture to become a magnificent poet, traveler, and author. Sinclair essentially wrote her way out of poverty and oppression, and the result, this gorgeous memoir, is pure fire. Buy it here.
‘Harley Loco’ by Rayya Elias (2013)
My new book tells the story of my friendship and love with Rayya Elias, but in this memoir, she tells her own harrowing story of immigration, alienation, drug addiction, music, and recovery. Raw and unflinching, her voice continues to shine long after her death. Buy it here.
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Out of office: microretirement is trending in the workplaceThe explainer Long vacations are the new way to beat burnout
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Will California tax its billionaires?Talking Points Proposed one-time levy would shore up education, Medicaid
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Blue Origin launches Mars probes in NASA debutSpeed Read The New Glenn rocket is carrying small twin spacecraft toward Mars as part of NASA’s Escapade mission
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Train Dreams pulses with ‘awards season gravitas’The Week Recommends Felicity Jones and Joel Edgerton star in this meditative period piece about a working man in a vanished America
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Middleland: Rory Stewart’s essay collection is a ‘triumph’The Week Recommends The Rest is Politics co-host compiles his fortnightly columns written during his time as an MP
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‘Paper Girl: A Memoir of Home and Family in a Fractured America’ and ‘Unabridged: The Thrill of (and Threat to) the Modern Dictionary’feature The culture divide in small-town Ohio and how the internet usurped dictionaries
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6 homes with fall foliagefeature An autumnal orange Craftsman, a renovated Greek Revival church and an estate with an orchard
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Bugonia: ‘deranged, extreme and explosively enjoyable’Talking Point Yorgos Lanthimos’ film stars Emma Stone as a CEO who is kidnapped and accused of being an alien
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The Revolutionists: a ‘superb and monumental’ bookThe Week Recommends Jason Burke ‘epic’ account of the plane hijackings and kidnappings carried out by extremists in the 1970s
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Film reviews: ‘Bugonia,’ ‘The Mastermind’ and ‘Nouvelle Vague’feature A kidnapped CEO might only appear to be human, an amateurish art heist goes sideways, and Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Breathless’ gets a lively homage
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Book reviews: ‘Against the Machine: On the Unmaking of Humanity’ and ‘Nobody’s Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice’feature An examination of humanity in the face of “the Machine” and a posthumous memoir from one of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims, who recently died by suicide
