What would you do if your life suddenly fell apart?

Award winning author, and journalist for GQ Magazine, Elizabeth Gilbert, decided to take a year and live abroad, touching down in Italy, India and Indonesia for four months each.

Now I have to admit that when my girlfriend first loaned me this book, I really wasn’t that interested in reading it (I had a new mythology book I was itching to get to). But she said it made her want to visit Italy (I love that idea) and that it was a quick and easy read. I was off to the beach for a few days and I needed an easy read to take with me, so I decided I’d give it a go (sorry mythology book).

I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was hooked within the first few pages (I’m not usually interested in personal memoirs). But Elizabeth’s story is one that many people can relate to. On the outside it seemed she had the perfect life; she was married to a terrific guy, she had a great job and a great house.

But as we can all attest, sometimes appearances can be deceiving, and what Elizabeth found was that her world started to fall apart around her. She was suffering from depression and panic attacks and her marriage was disintegrating.

In the hopes of discovering her spiritual self (and being in dire need of some recovery from life), she decides to take a year off and go to Italy, India and Indonesia under the premise that in Italy one learns about passion (and she’d always wanted to learn to speak Italian), in India one learns to connect with their inner spirit and in Indonesia one can learn to integrate the two.

I really enjoyed her writing on the various cultures she lived in. For instance, I never knew that Naples, Italy, actually had the best pizza in the world? Of course I knew the best pizza in the world must be in Italy, I just had no idea where??? She also gives many interesting insights on life in an ashram (it’s not all mediation – people can have fun there too) and she reveals the secret history of Bali.

”Eat, Pray, Love” is one of the most inspirational books I’ve read in a long time! Elizabeth’s writing is witty, funny and sincere, so the book gave me the feeling of reading a close friend’s memoir rather than someone who I’d never actually even heard of. And she had me laughing out loud throughout the whole book. I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who has ever questioned their own life, or wondered about their own spiritual journey.

And I will definitely be adding Elizabeth Gilbert to my list of people I’d most like to meet!