Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

“Ugh, do I have to read it?” I thought to myself when our team PA, Robyn handed me this book. It looked like chick-lit to me, and I wouldn’t usually be caught dead reading chick-lit. I’m strictly a crime and thriller girl, with a bit of classics, business and self-development thrown in for balance. But I only ever resort to chick-lit when I’m seriously stressed. I have to admit to consuming several Mills & Boon novels (shhh, don’t tell anyone…) during my university exams.

So it was with some reluctance that I opened the cover that weekend, feeling obligated to read what someone had been kind enough to lend me. And it was with even more reluctance that I closed the back cover a few days later!

Elizabeth Gilbert is a successful magazine feature writer. At 36 years old, she has just experienced a bitter and drawn out divorce, followed by a rebound relationship that also fizzled out. She decides to take time off from her work to attempt to piece the bits of her shattered soul back together and makes a deal with her publisher to travel and to write about her experiences upon her return.

First stop is Italy, where she eats and eats between Italian lessons. Next she’s off to India, to study yoga and meditation at an Ashram and lose all the weight she gained in Italy. And then it’s off to Indonesia, to learn the secrets of life from a Balinese medicine man who invited her to stay.

Sounds like chick-lit, doesn’t it? But it’s not. And it’s not a travel book either. It’s not about the places she visited. It’s also not a self-help book! She’s not peddling her ideas or religion to anyone.

What it is is funny – really laugh out loud, OMG funny! And it’s deep too. Some of her descriptions of her thoughts and emotions made me feel as though I were looking in a mirror.

Since finishing the book, everyone I’ve mentioned it to has either read it or knows someone who has. Not only women either. Even my husband read and enjoyed it. So if you’re one of the few who hasn’t read it yet, and someone hands it to you and says, “Here, read this,” dive right in. Oh, and did I mention it’s really funny??