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![Eat Pray Love 10th-Anniversary Edition: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia by [Elizabeth Gilbert]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/410sSlUMXAL._SY346_.jpg)
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Eat Pray Love 10th-Anniversary Edition: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia Kindle Edition
Elizabeth Gilbert
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LanguageEnglish
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PublisherRiverhead Books
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Publication dateJanuary 30, 2007
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Reading age18 years and up
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File size1719 KB
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Editorial Reviews
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
I wish Giovanni would kiss me.
Oh, but there are so many reasons why this would be a terrible idea. To begin with, Giovanni is ten years younger than I am, and, like most Italian guys in their twenties, he still lives with his mother. These facts alone make him an unlikely romantic partner for me, given that I am a professional American woman in my mid-thirties, who has just come through a failed marriage and a devastating, interminable divorce, followed immediately by a passionate love affair that ended in sickening heartbreak. This loss upon loss has left me feeling sad and brittle and about seven thousand years old. Purely as a matter of principle I wouldn't inflict my sorry, busted-up old self on the lovely, unsullied Giovanni. Not to mention that I have finally arrived at that age where a woman starts to question whether the wisest way to get over the loss of one beautiful brown-eyed young man is indeed to promptly invite another one into her bed. This is why I have been alone for many months now. This is why, in fact, I have decided to spend this entire year in celibacy.
To which the savvy observer might inquire: 'Then why did you come to Italy?'
To which I can only reply—especially when looking across the table at handsome Giovanni— 'Excellent question.'
Giovanni is my Tandem Exchange Partner. That sounds like an innuendo, but unfortunately it's not. All it really means is that we meet a few evenings a week here in Rome to practice each other's languages. We speak first in Italian, and he is patient with me; then we speak in English, and I am patient with him. I discovered Giovanni a few weeks after I'd arrived in Rome, thanks to that big Internet cafÈ at the Piazza Barbarini, across the street from that fountain with the sculpture of that sexy merman blowing into his conch shell. He (Giovanni, that is—not the merman) had posted a flier on the bulletin board explaining that a native Italian speaker was seeking a native English speaker for conversational language practice. Right beside his appeal was another flier with the same request, word-for-word identical in every way, right down to the typeface. The only difference was the contact information. One flier listed an e-mail address for somebody named Giovanni; the other introduced somebody named Dario. But even the home phone number was the same.
Using my keen intuitive powers, I e-mailed both men at the same time, asking in Italian, "Are you perhaps brothers?"
It was Giovanni who wrote back this very provocativo message: "Even better. Twins!"
Yes—much better. Tall, dark and handsome identical twenty-five-year-old twins, as it turned out, with those giant brown liquid-center Italian eyes that just unstitch me. After meeting the boys in person, I began to wonder if perhaps I should adjust my rule somewhat about remaining celibate this year. For instance, perhaps I could remain totally celibate except for keeping a pair of handsome twenty-five-year-old Italian twin brothers as lovers. Which was slightly reminiscent of a friend of mine who is vegetarian except for bacon, but nonetheless ... I was already composing my letter to Penthouse:
In the flickering, candlelit shadows of the Roman café, it was impossible to tell whose hands were caress—
But, no.
No and no.
I chopped tvhe fantasy off in mid-word. This was not my moment to be seeking romance and (as day follows night) to further complicate my already knotty life. This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that can only come from solitude.
Anyway, by now, by the middle of November, the shy, studious Giovanni and I have become dear buddies. As for Dario—the more razzle-dazzle swinger brother of the two—I have introduced him to my adorable little Swedish friend Sofie, and how they've been sharing their evenings in Rome is another kind of Tandem Exchange altogether. But Giovanni and I, we only talk. Well, we eat and we talk. We have been eating and talking for many pleasant weeks now, sharing pizzas and gentle grammatical corrections, and tonight has been no exception. A lovely evening of new idioms and fresh mozzarella.
Now it is midnight and foggy, and Giovanni is walking me home to my apartment through these back streets of Rome, which meander organically around the ancient buildings like bayou streams snaking around shadowy clumps of cypress groves. Now we are at my door. We face each other. He gives me a warm hug. This is an improvement; for the first few weeks, he would only shake my hand. I think if I were to stay in Italy for another three years, he might actually get up the juice to kiss me. On the other hand, he might just kiss me right now, tonight, right here by my door ... there's still a chance ... I mean we're pressed up against each other's bodies beneath this moonlight ... and of course it would be a terrible mistake ... but it's still such a wonderful possibility that he might actually do it right now ... that he might just bend down ... and ... and ... Nope.
He separates himself from the embrace.
"Good night, my dear Liz," he says.
"Buona notte, caro mio," I reply.
I walk up the stairs to my fourth-floor apartment, all alone. I let myself into my tiny little studio, all alone. I shut the door behind me. Another solitary bedtime in Rome. Another long night's sleep ahead of me, with nobody and nothing in my bed except a pile of Italian phrasebooks and dictionaries.
I am alone, I am all alone, I am completely alone.
Grasping this reality, I let go of my bag, drop to my knees and press my forehead against the floor. There, I offer up to the universe a fervent prayer of thanks.
First in English.
Then in Italian.
And then—just to get the point across—in Sanskrit.
2
And since I am already down there in supplication on the floor, let me hold that position as I reach back in time three years earlier to the moment when this entire story began—a moment which also found me in this exact same posture: on my knees, on a floor, praying.
Everything else about the three-years-ago scene was different, though. That time, I was not in Rome but in the upstairs bathroom of the big house in the suburbs of New York which I'd recently purchased with my husband. It was a cold November, around three o'clock in the morning. My husband was sleeping in our bed. I was hiding in the bathroom for something like the forty-seventh consecutive night, and—just as during all those nights before—I was sobbing. Sobbing so hard, in fact, that a great lake of tears and snot was spreading before me on the bathroom tiles, a veritable Lake Inferior (if you will) of all my shame and fear and confusion and grief.
I don't want to be married anymore.
I was trying so hard not to know this, but the truth kept insisting itself to me.
I don't want to be married anymore. I don't want to live in this big house. I don't want to have a baby.
But I was supposed to want to have a baby. I was thirty-one years old. My husband and I—who had been together for eight years, married for six—had built our entire life around the common expectation that, after passing the doddering old age of thirty, I would want to settle down and have children. By then, we mutually anticipated, I would have grown weary of traveling and would be happy to live in a big, busy household full of children and homemade quilts, with a garden in the backyard and a cozy stew bubbling on the stovetop. (The fact that this was a fairly accurate portrait of my own mother is a quick indicator of how difficult it once was for me to tell the difference between myself and the powerful woman who had raised me.) But I didn't—as I was appalled to be finding out—want any of these things. Instead, as my twenties had come to a close, that deadline of THIRTY had loomed over me like a death sentence, and I discovered that I did not want to be pregnant. I kept waiting to want to have a baby, but it didnt happen. And I know what it feels like to want something, believe me. I well know what desire feels like. But it wasn't there. Moreover, I couldn't stop thinking about what my sister had said to me once, as she was breast-feeding her firstborn: 'Having a baby is like getting a tattoo on your face. You really need to be certain it's what you want before you commit.'
How could I turn back now, though? Everything was in place. This was supposed to be the year. In fact, we'd been trying to get pregnant for a few months already. But nothing had happened (aside from the fact that—in an almost sarcastic mockery of pregnancy—I was experiencing psychosomatic morning sickness, nervously throwing up my breakfast every day). And every month when I got my period I would find myself whispering furtively in the bathroom: Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me one more month to live ...
--This text refers to the audio_download edition.
From The Washington Post
Reviewed by Grace Lichtenstein
Copyright 2006, The Washington Post. All Rights Reserved.
--This text refers to the audio_download edition.
From Booklist
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the audio_download edition.
From The New Yorker
Copyright © 2006 The New Yorker --This text refers to the audio_download edition.
Review
"An engaging, intelligent, and highly entertaining memoir."—Time
"A meditation on love in its many forms—love of food, language, humanity, God, and most meaningful for Gilbert, love of self."—Los Angeles Times
"This insightful, funny account of her travels reads like a mix of Susan Orlean and Frances Mayes."—Entertainment Weekly
"This is a wonderful book, brilliant and personal, rich in spiritual insight."—Anne Lamott
From the Trade Paperback edition. --This text refers to the audio_download edition.
About the Author
From Bookmarks Magazine
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. --This text refers to the audio_download edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the audio_download edition.
From AudioFile
Product details
- ASIN : B000PDYVVG
- Publisher : Riverhead Books (January 30, 2007)
- Publication date : January 30, 2007
- Language : English
- File size : 1719 KB
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 387 pages
- Lending : Not Enabled
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Best Sellers Rank:
#32,684 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #4 in General Indonesia Travel Guides
- #23 in Travel Writing
- #48 in Travel (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:
Customer reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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That’s exactly what she needed - rest. She needed to be strong. She planned a one-year vacation in which she hoped to mend her broken heart and to find peace. She would spent four months in Italy; four months in India and four months in Indonesia. She points out that each country begins with “I’ and this journey was about self discovery.
It’s a must read for people like me who’ve had our hearts broken, and then those hearts never seems to mind. I’m still aching over the loss of my dad and my birth family. I’ve studied meditation with differing results. This book proved a how-to book on how to heal.
Chapters were not intended to be how-to chapters, but that’s what many of them were for me.
Most of us can’t drop everything and rush to an apartment in Rome and then to a retreat in India and then to Bali. But we can learn yoga and meditation anywhere. We can order pizza and make new friends.
If you aren’t hurting and you don’t need the guide to meditation and self discovery, it’s still a great book. The collection of 108 personal essays are fascinating with lots of fresh insights into the human psych and the types of characters that one usually finds only in a novel. There’s Richard the Texan who nicknames Gilbert, “Groceries; there’s the plumber who takes her to the highest spot at the Indian retreat, there’s Ketut the medicine man who is somewhere between 65 and 112 years old and Wayan the medicine woman searching for a home. It’s hard not to fall in love with these characters. Gilbert gains weight in Italy, self awareness in India and self confidence in Bali, Indonesia. And she finds love.
Some chapters are too pat. She discovers the four brothers who are sort of guardian angels we all have. On her way home that day, a monkey threatens her, but she is feisty, and she stand up to the creature. After all she’s got four tough brothers protecting her. Too pat. The chapter was contrived.
The reader is so busy rooting for her that he forgets his own troubles - except to put the book down for awhile to eat, pray, meditate and fall in love.
That’s a lot to get from one book.
Top reviews from other countries

The idea of travelling in order to "find yourself" always seems attractive, particularly to middle aged women.
Initially I found the memoir difficult to engage with. The author is in her thirties and I though she was trying to use this as a barrier to readers. I also found her chaotic thought processes quite complex to work through. What kept me reading through this was the gorgeous descriptions of sights and emotions. I'm not a religious person but strongly acknowledge a spiritual side of the world which seems to escape understanding - this book made me confront that and think a lot.
At one point, the author describes that her spirituality interests her sister from a point of "intellectual curiosity" which I can understand and think this is how I approached this whole book.
During the year, Elizabeth Gilbert visits Italy, India and Indonesia. In each place she looks for different experiences, all working towards giving her some contentment with her life. I struggled with the transitions between countries as they seemed to happen very swiftly. Overall, I found that I was never really given the chance to properly understand the author and gain any deep understanding of her motives - I think I~ would have preferred this book to be three separate volumes.
What I did love was the open minded way that the author approached everything that came her way and the accessible way in which she described her experiences. I partly envy her religion as it does seem the means to a wonderful way to approach the world and everything that is thrown at you.
Throughout the book there are all sorts of little gems which I am trying to remember to make me a better person.
I may recommend this to some friends but will be very careful who I select. It took me a long time to read this book which is an indicator of my enjoyment.

But as It turns out, this book is pretty awesome!
Gilbert is disillusioned with life and disappointed in love, she travels to the three I's:
Italy - where she eats, India - where she prays and Indonesia (Bali) where she finds love.
It's as simple and yet as momentous as that. You'll either read it and chuck it across the room or read it and come away with something profound for yourself. Liz is a gifted writer, I have ear marked, highlighted and underlined the heck outta this book.
I suspect many would secretly love to do exactly what Liz did (I would), but cannot due to commitments, responsibilities and budget constraints.
That's perhaps why there are so many bad reviews, I get that, I understand. But maybe instead of reading it with your defences already up, try reading it like it's fiction. Be open minded and give it a go.


Its a "chick-flick" type story, not my kind of genre so I've not enjoyed it.
The book is split into 3 segments each consisting of 33 chapters. Each chapter is very short, some not even a page, so it's not a huge book.
Part 1 talks mainly about how much the protagonist loves learning and speaking Italian, and how much she wants to get off with her Italian language tutor, and how much weight she has put on.
Part 2 gets a bit better only because of another guy giving her a reality check, otherwise it covers mostly how she can't get out of her own head.
Part 3, haven't made it to this part yet. Haven't finished Part 2 yet. Book is still sitting unloved on my shelf waiting for the end of the world to come and destroy it so I don't have to continue reading it.
Or I could put it in the compost bin...

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