“I’ve been screwed and sued and tattooed and I’m still standing here in front of you.”

Welcome to the ashram. Forget tranquil peace-loving monks. Meet Richard, an ex-junkie from Texas. He’s just one of the many colorful characters who crosses paths with Liz Gilbert on her “search for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia.”  

At 34, drained dry by affairs of the heart, Gilbert embarks on a soul-searching journey of self-discovery and personal renewal. Her account of that inner and outer travel makes us all richer. Reading Eat, Pray, Love is like indulging in a super-sized combo of great escape meets life lessons minus the cholesterol.

Gilbert structures her narrative into108 tales which she divides into three sections representing time spent in Italy, India and Indonesia. She seeks pleasure in Italy, spiritual devotion in India, and in Indonesia, a balance between the two. The design is patterned after the japa malas, a string of 108 beads used in Eastern prayer meditation.  

On her sojourn, Gilbert meets beautiful brown-eyed Giovanni, her Italian tandem language partner and Ketut, a mischievous medicine man who encourages her to smile with her liver. If you liked the film Moonstruck, you’ll enjoy the time she spends in Italy where she learns the difference between entertainment-seeking and pleasure-seeking.  You may even be inspired to explore how you might make something out of nothing, whether it be a meal, an essay or a life.

In India, Gilbert pursues spiritual devotion at the ashram of her guru. Her first attempts at yoga and meditation are more comical than uplifting. She discovers the Buddhist concept of a “monkey-mind” swinging from limb to limb. Through discipline and devotional practice, she experiences detachment. She also learns compassion, commitment and self-control. She grows to appreciate the Zen wisdom, “You cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water.” 

“Where are you going today? Where are you coming from? Are you married?”

These are the questions posed to Gilbert when she comes to Indonesia seeking a balance between worldly pleasure and spiritual devotion. She arrives without a plan and quickly becomes enmeshed in the intricate web of relationships that make up that society.  

Eat, Pray, Love is a personal memoir that reads like a novel. It can also serve as a guide to your own spiritual exploration. The tone is chatty and profound, self-deprecating and sincere. An unpretentious teacher, Gilbert is a master of the metaphor. Spiraling down into despair she writes, “I felt like soil on some desperate sharecropper’s farm, sorely overworked and needing a fallow season.”

On her quest, Gilbert ponders, “What are my choices to be? What do I believe that I deserve in this life? Where can I accept sacrifice and where can I not?”  

How rich might our lives be if we all sought the answers to these questions?