Eat, Pray, Love

Personal perspectives on religion or spirituality can often be boring at best and unbelievably awkward at worst. Fortunately Elizabeth Gilbert presents her own journey (the physical and metaphysical), in Eat Pray Love, without gravitas and with humor and humility. I happen to be a big fan of the single-woman-on-a-journey-after-heartbreak literature (read: Tales of a Female Nomad), and Liz (can I call her Liz?) has such a great sense of humor (personifying Depression and Lonliness as thugs, getting a prim and proper Italian saleswoman to admit that she, Liz, does indeed look like the pasta and gelato she spent three months eating in Italy and divulging her friend's nickname for her as Groceries) that I felt immediately drawn to her and her friends.
I was torn between her reasons for getting a divorce: "finding yourself" seems a lame reason to give up a shared life, but she readily admitted that, and how brave is it to actually go on a year's journey, by yourself, to three unknown countries, and come out at the other end a better person?
I think the same narrative could have been mangled by a less sophisticated writer. Liz doesn't fall into the trite or privelaged perspective. She really maintains a balance (which was her goal in the year of travel) and when she starts to tip, she laughs, has the reader laugh with her, and pulls herself back up.
Netflix stars? A whopping 5 out of 5!