Ah... so you've gone through a bitter divorce, feel depressed, are on your own, and what do you do? Well, if you're writer Elizabeth Gilbert, you go on self-discovery journey:

Feb. 23, 2006 Reeling from an ugly divorce, hobbled by debilitating depression, and suffering from a particularly noxious case of obsessive love, Elizabeth Gilbert did what most of us only fantasize about doing when our lives are falling apart: She split. Unencumbered by children or an office job, the 34-year-old writer secured a book deal and took off for a year to take in three locales she felt could help heal her battered psyche. "Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia," the chronicle of that journey, is equal parts travelogue, self-help book, and spiritual memoir. It is the story of an ambitious and accomplished New Yorker who one night finds herself on the bathroom floor of her Hudson Valley home, sobbing and praying to God for the first time in her life: Please tell me what to do.

That night marks the beginning of Gilbert's "conversation with God." Though she is felled by depression, Gilbert, through prayer and meditation, realizes that she has to doggedly pursue that which eludes her (and most of us) -- contentment, forgiveness, grace. She finds a spiritual teacher -- an Indian guru with tens of thousands of devotees -- and begins chanting with a group of her followers in New York, "regular-looking people praying to God." After hearing the guru speak in person, and finding herself with "chills bumps" over her whole body, even the skin of her face -- she decides to get serious about her spiritual practice. And so she sets off to Italy to explore the art of pleasure, to India to practice the art of devotion, and to Indonesia to practice the art of balancing both.

Gilbert's voyage begins in Rome, where she rents an apartment in an upscale neighborhood and signs up for Italian lessons for no reason other than that the language is "more beautiful than roses."

OK, this is all fine, but it reminded me of the movie Under the Tuscan Sun. How many people reading this could afford to go on a trip and rent "an apartment in an upscale neighborhood" in Italy? Just like the movie, which paints a very unrealistic alternative to most of us, I find these kinds of books hurt more than they help those of us living in the real world. They may be fine as novels but I question their usefulness as self-help.

You can read the book review here.

Tags: book, singles, divorce, eat, pray, love