Word: gilbert
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...Gilbert is a highly conversational writer - a blessing if you are in the memoir business. Four years after its publication, Eat, Pray, Love remains on the New York Times best-seller list, giving its author a chance, with the likely sales of this new book, to become the Malcolm Gladwell of soul-searching. Gilbert left her loyalists believing that a year of spiritual questing would end with peace, love and the address of the best pizzeria in Naples. There could be no doubt that her readers wanted more. She and Felipe had gone off into the sunset; could...
...Committed - and to a certain extent, Powell's Cleaving - demonstrates the curse of the conversational writer. I confess to having found EPL tedious at times and to struggling with the fortuitous arrival of true love at the end of Gilbert's year of self-discovery. (In Committed, she pokes fun at herself, quoting her sister Catherine's response to her gushy e-mails from Bali: "Yeah, I was planning to go to a tropical island this weekend with my Brazilian lover, too ... but then there was all that traffic.") There was no denying, however, that she was a vibrant woman...
...Gilbert also repeats, incessantly, information she's already conveyed, whether it be the vastness of the belly of a pregnant woman she's dining with or the details of a coat - wine-colored, with a fur collar - once owned by her grandmother. (We hear about its beauty four times in three pages.) There are useful insights into the dilemma of modern marriage here, but the overall effect of the heavily padded Committed is like that of being called, over and over, by a friend who wants to talk your ear off about her impending nuptials. Only instead of debating...
...recognizes her on the street. The honesty of the admission doesn't cleanse the implied disrespect for those - from the real Eric to her fans - who adore her. Powell was also sentenced to sequel, although her amply demonstrated lack of humility suggests she was happier to comply than Gilbert. But when she runs out of story - the Fleisher's internship complete - she copies earlier Gilbert, setting forth on a haphazard journey around the world. Her "Eat, Sulk, Stew" wraps up with a return to the husband she belittled and betrayed. Now here is a marriage to be debated. Maybe...
Both books feel rushed into print. Cleaving begs for better boundaries and structure; the ladylike Committed is too confined to feel truly intimate. Gilbert overshares only in the department of exclamation points, and if you want to know what life postsunset is like, be advised: she takes us only to the altar. But these two writers share more than just marital ambivalence. It may be difficult to work up sympathy for best-selling authors who end up portrayed on the big screen by the likes of Amy Adams and Julia Roberts. (EPL the movie is scheduled for release this year...