Few who read “Eat, Pray, Love” could forget the scene where Elizabeth Gilbert, sobbing on the bathroom floor, gives up on the life of home, marriage and babies. It is the precursor for the entire autobiographical story of the year she spent in Italy, India and Indonesia on a journey through comfort food, the restoration of her soul and, ultimately, love.
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…
In daylight hours, I refused that tought, but at night it would consume me. What a catastrophe. How could I be such a criminal jerk as to proceed this deep into a marriage, only to leave it?
I don’t want to be married anymore.
Now, Elizabeth Gilbert is married. Her book is being made into a movie with Julia Roberts (due out this August), and Gilbert has written a followup to “Eat, Pray, Love” in “Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage” (Viking, $26.95). Released this week, it has two primary questions to answer: One, is the book as satisfying a read as “Eat, Pray, Love,” and two, will it sell like the first book did?
From USA Today:
“Eat, Pray, Love became a publishing phenomenon with its own acronym. Published in 2006, EPL has sold more than 6 million copies in the USA, plus an additional 1 million overseas. It was already a word-of-mouth sensation and book club fave when Oprah Winfrey called and invited Gilbert on to her show twice in 2007…
“A sequel of sorts to EPL, (“Committed”) has an announced first printing of 1 million copies.
"After the success of EPL, Committed totes some big sales expectations. Can it meet them? Maybe, says Carol Fitzgerald, president of TheBookReportNetwork.com. "There is a built-in audience just waiting for this book. ... For many women, Gilbert has become a character for them and they want to see what happens next in her life."
"Early reviews have been mixed. Entertainment Weekly gave Committed a "C" and wondered whether the subject matter — marriage — "perhaps combined with sophomore jitters after such a phenomenal publishing success, has spooked the author." Publishers Weekly was more positive. While disliking the part-history, part-travelogue structure, the reviewer concluded that "Gilbert remains the spirited storyteller she was in EPL."
"In Committed, Gilbert explains how she and Felipe, both veterans of divorce, ended up violating their sacred vow never to marry," and, in fact, work hard to do so:
“For several months already, I had been traveling across Southeast Asia with a man who was soon to become my husband. I suppose the conventional term for such an individual would be "fiancé," but neither one of us was very comfortable with that word, so we weren't using it. In fact, neither one of us was very comfortable with this whole idea of matrimony at all. Marriage was not something we had ever planned with each other, nor was it something either of us wanted. Yet providence had interfered with our plans, which was why we were now wandering haphazardly across Vietnam, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Indonesia, all the while making urgent—even desperate—efforts to return to America and wed.”
Few of us can afford – financially or otherwise – to spend a year traveling the world in search of ourselves. So we went on Gilbert’s travels with her, finding comfort in pasta, serenity in meditation and love where it was least expected. In fact, I think one reason the book was so popular was that it is easy to substitute your own crisis and yearning for discovery for Gilbert’s character, thereby experiencing her year for yourself in a way.
Can the same thing happen for “Committed,” or, in this case, does Gilbert, now 40, simply become the character in her own story instead of Everywoman?
Did you read “Eat, Pray, Love”? What did you take away from it, and will you buy “Committed” for those same reasons?
Read an excerpt from “Committed” at ABC News:
http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/Books/elizabeth-gilbert-committed-book-excerpt/story?id=9474250
A Q&A with Gilbert in Time magazine:
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1951607,00.html
The USA Today story:
http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2010-01-05-gilbert05_CV_N.htm
A photo of Roberts in the title role:
http://www.daemonsmovies.com/2010/01/05/julia-roberts-in-eat-pray-love-movie-photo/