Wonderfully written

Wonderfully written by an incongruous person
By P। Meltzer (Wynnewood, PA USA)
This review is from: Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across
Italy, India and Indonesia (Hardcover)First, let me get out of the way the fact that I thought this was an excellent book. I
wouldn't have thought that to read about a woman spending 4 months in Italy,
India and Indonesia would have made for such good reading, but I was wrong. It
shows that, if a writer is talented enough (and Ms. Gilbert surely is), anything can be
made interesting. She comes off as funny, extroverted, thoughtful, charming and--
especially--brutally honest about herself. In fact, she is so open with her readers that
at times, I felt like I was reading her private diary or something that anyone else
would write only to their closest confidante.
While I was reading the book however, I kept thinking about something else
entirely: I wonder what it would be like to go out with this woman? (Given that this
book seems to have a 99% female readership judging from the reviews, and I am
not, I suspect that few others were wondering the same thing.) Anyway, here is
what I thought about. On the plus side, she's a wonderful writer which tells me that
she must be very intelligent and that's obviously a good thing. Her looks? Quite
attractive ... I think. I say that because the only photos I've seen are the one on the
dust jacket (which is very flattering) and one on her website, which is pleasant
enough but in which she looks like a completely different woman.
On the minus side however, she seems to have an incongruous combination of
personality traits. For example, when it comes to men, she seems simultaneously
incredibly independent and yet incredibly needy. I suspect that this combination may
have played a role in the troubles she had with her husband and with "David". To
me, one of the most revealing paragraphs in the book is on page 65 where she talks
about her "boundary issues with men". She tells us that when she's in love with a
man, she gives herself over to him completely until she becomes so exhausted that
it's time to become infatuated with someone else. Virtually by her own admission,
she seems to be what Vince Vaughn called a "stage 5 clinger" in "Wedding
Crashers". How many men would line up to be with someone like that?
She also seems like someone full of melodrama who careens back and forth
between very high high's and very low low's with not much in between. She seems
to hope (and expect) that her feelings towards her mate (and vice versa) will always
be as intense as they were at the highest point, and I imagine her to be
disappointed if a relationship should ever descend from that plateau. If in fact that's
her mindset, that's a recipe for trouble. (To her credit though, she seemed to have
more of an equilibrium about her by the end of the book than she did at the
beginning, which is perhaps not surprising.) It was difficult to tell however whether
her wanderlust and her peripatetic nature had changed by the end. I suspect that it
hadn't, which might not augur well for her future relationships unless she can find a
soulmate who does nothing but travel around the world with her. (Come to think of
it, maybe she did find such a person in "Felipe".) In any event, regardless of
whether she is a total catch or a total nightmare (or something in between), the fact
remains that she is a hell of a writer and I highly recommend her book.