Eat Pray Love
Reading Creative Nonfiction Autumn, 2012
Eat, pray, love—let’s cross over and start a journey of self-inquiry, self-discovery and self-fulfillment
Eat, Pray, Love
By Elizabeth Gilbert
Penguin Books
2006
334 pp
What does it take for a downhearted woman to walk out of the haze and start a brand new life? Elizabeth Gilbert provides us with quite an enthralling solution—that is through the true pleasure of nourishment by eating, the power of prayers in ashrams, and the inner peace and balance from true love. Eat, pray, love is the interior record of Elizabeth Gilbert’s spiritual gap year as she traveled through Italy, India and Indonesia to recover from her exhausting struggle out of an excruciating marriage and a clueless love affair. With a record-breaking 182 weeks on the New York Times’ bestseller list, the book has won over the general readers as well as the captious critics with Gilbert’s humorous wording and utterly frankness oozed between the lines, permeating in every sad, funny and maddening moment.
The book would definitely lose much of its luster without Gilbert’s witty language, wry humor and enthralling plots unfolded in a brilliantly orchestrated manner to bring her story to life. As an extremely talented and experienced novelist, Gilbert indeed knows how to capture the readers’ heart and brings them along with her on this seemingly personal but essentially universal journey from pain to healing.
Gilbert begins the novel with a bold and straightforward statement: “I wish Giovanni would kiss me.”(7)It immediately creates our anticipation for a particular scene along the plot trajectory that the writer’s love life is at stake. Rather than explicitly tells, Gilbert implicitly shows us that she’s eager to get her love life back on track. It’s human nature of men to be drawn to the twists and turns in the search of love; therefore, Gilbert successfully creates the momentum to keep readers turning the page. The book, of course,
Eat, pray, love—let’s cross over and start a journey of self-inquiry, self-discovery and self-fulfillment
Eat, Pray, Love
By Elizabeth Gilbert
Penguin Books
2006
334 pp
What does it take for a downhearted woman to walk out of the haze and start a brand new life? Elizabeth Gilbert provides us with quite an enthralling solution—that is through the true pleasure of nourishment by eating, the power of prayers in ashrams, and the inner peace and balance from true love. Eat, pray, love is the interior record of Elizabeth Gilbert’s spiritual gap year as she traveled through Italy, India and Indonesia to recover from her exhausting struggle out of an excruciating marriage and a clueless love affair. With a record-breaking 182 weeks on the New York Times’ bestseller list, the book has won over the general readers as well as the captious critics with Gilbert’s humorous wording and utterly frankness oozed between the lines, permeating in every sad, funny and maddening moment.
The book would definitely lose much of its luster without Gilbert’s witty language, wry humor and enthralling plots unfolded in a brilliantly orchestrated manner to bring her story to life. As an extremely talented and experienced novelist, Gilbert indeed knows how to capture the readers’ heart and brings them along with her on this seemingly personal but essentially universal journey from pain to healing.
Gilbert begins the novel with a bold and straightforward statement: “I wish Giovanni would kiss me.”(7)It immediately creates our anticipation for a particular scene along the plot trajectory that the writer’s love life is at stake. Rather than explicitly tells, Gilbert implicitly shows us that she’s eager to get her love life back on track. It’s human nature of men to be drawn to the twists and turns in the search of love; therefore, Gilbert successfully creates the momentum to keep readers turning the page. The book, of course,
Cited: Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat, Pray, Love. New York: Penguin, 2006. Print. Wall, Dorothy. More Ways to Use Fiction Techniques in Nonfiction <http://www.dorothywall.com/writing-nonfiction-tech.html>