Saturday, January 09, 2010

Eat, Pray, Marry
By Cutis Sittenfeld
Published New York Times: January 7, 2010

COMMITTED
A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage

By Elizabeth Gilbert 285 pp. Viking. $26.95.

When exactly was it that “Eat, Pray, Love,” Elizabeth Gilbert’s 2006 memoir about her divorce and subsequent year of travel in Italy, India and Indonesia, crossed from mere best seller — published in more than 30 languages, feted by Oprah — to cultural phenomenon? The film adaptation is due out later this year, with Gilbert played by (but of course) Julia Roberts; some of the people Gilbert wrote about, including her ex-husband, are now working on books of their own; and Gilbert’s second appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” featured such admiring readers as a woman who had actually retraced much of Gilbert’s around-the-world journey.
Perhaps most impressive of all, in a sign of what a widely understood reference point the book has become, it inspired a headline in The Onion: “Copy of ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ Left on ­Elliptical.”

Author photo by Damon Winter/The New York Times

So self-aware, accommodating and generally good-natured a writer is Gilbert that in “Committed” she gives us what we want by addressing the “Eat, Pray, Love” business right away — as in, before the new book even officially begins, in a prefatory note to the reader. No, she tells us, she had no idea how big “Eat, Pray, Love” would be (a claim believable in part because of that book’s candor about topics like constipation, masturbation and two-way conversations with God). Yes, after the success of “Eat, Pray, Love,” she was freaked out and self-conscious and wondered if she was finished as a writer, in spite of the fact that she’d written three earlier books, all well received and one nominated for a National Book Award. And no, she doesn’t think she can replicate the popularity of “Eat, Pray, Love,” but here’s the book she needed to write this time around.

Once that’s out of the way, we pick up pretty much where “Eat, Pray, Love” left off, with Gilbert in the arms of the boyfriend she pseudonymously calls Felipe — a debonair Brazilian gemstone importer who had become an Australian citizen and met Gilbert while he was living in Bali. He is older, 55 to her 37 when “Committed” starts in the spring of 2006. They’ve established a happy rhythm in which they mostly share a rented house in suburban Philadelphia, but in order to comply with visa restrictions Felipe leaves the country for several weeks every three months; for two inveterate travelers and independent personalities, this routine is no big deal. Felipe also has been through a divorce, he has adult children and he’s as determined as Gilbert not to ruin the good thing they have by marrying.

Alas, their agreeable arrangement is upended when the couple is returning together from a trip overseas and Felipe is detained at the Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport. A Department of Homeland Security officer explains that Felipe’s repeated three-month stints in the United States in fact violate the terms of his visa. He must leave the country immediately, and the fastest way for him to return on a permanent basis is for the couple to get married.

With Felipe jailed overnight then sent to Australia, Gilbert continues alone to Philadelphia to pack up their rental house. The couple reconnects in Southeast Asia (it’s cheap there, and “Eat, Pray, Love” hasn’t yet hit it big) with a plan to travel for the next 10 months while waiting for the paperwork required for Felipe’s new visa to go through. Since they’re headed toward a wedding whether they like it or not, Gilbert will also use this time to figure out the institution of marriage, not only by researching its history but also by discussing the subject with everyone with whom she has contact — from her own family members to Hmong grannies in rural Vietnam.

As a tour guide to both Asia and matrimony, Gilbert is consistently entertaining and illuminating and often funny. That said, something about the premise and structure of this book feels off. Gilbert’s pattern is to chronicle a firsthand experience during her and Felipe’s “exile” and then use that experience as a point of departure for delving into various aspects of marriage. At an Internet cafe in Luang Prabang, Laos, for instance, she notices that the young Buddhist monk checking his e-mail at the computer next to hers has received a message from a person named Carla containing this eyebrow-raising sentence: “I still long for you as my lover.” Gilbert doesn’t speak to the monk, nor does she see him again — and Gilbert being Gilbert, she has the good manners to chide herself for reading his e-mail in the first place — but this one glimpsed sentence prompts her to ponder, for the next 40 pages, infatuation, adultery and divorce.
The full review at NYT.

No comments: