eat pray love

the lyrical writing of elizabeth gilbert touched the pallete of my visual eye the way that perfectly seared foie gras melts on your tongue with buttery smoothness. it's a delicious read that captured my mind's imagination as i ate the words of her pen one by one. like biting into the flesh of a ripe pommegrante, a carefulness as to not stain yet to enjoy its burst of unexpected sweetness.

gilbert is a gifted novelist. her sentences are packed with so much color (i studied her use of adjectives and adverbs with amazement) that i often felt like one phrase would send me around the world and place me standing right beside her.

i fell in love with, for example, the world's best pizza in italy (which made me so delirious i thought that it actually loved me back), medidated with frustration on the hard cold floors of india, and opened my heart in indonesia. her global escapades and year's journey are chaptered by the seasons she spends in the three countries she chooses because they start with the letter, "I".

it was actually the perfect read for my month sabbatical on maui. my own little adventure of food, faith and new friendships. i suppose my journey could be chaptered by the letter "F".

i read five books that month, but this one was my favorite. it tickled my tastebuds with delightfully smart prose.

some critique the book for being an elitest work, a journey that only a white woman with wealth and priveledge could have access to. rather than offering readers a fanticiful escape through some 200 pages, critics find repulsion to gilbert's understated support for literal escapism (via travel), her quests an unrealistic option for the average American reader who similarly faces divorce and depression.

for once i tried to not think analytically of a book, and enjoyed it for what it is. and i found "eat, pray, love" to be a humorously light memoir built on a foundation of skilled and colorful writing, and one that brought a new smile and welcome invitation to my soul.