June 25, 2009: Page Turners 7 p.m.

Book: Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Discussion:

We had a smaller crowd at this month’s meeting. Many of our regular members had travel plans or had just returned from vacations which fit in nicely with Eat, Pray, Love. A few of the group members really liked the book, one even gave it a double thumbs up, while others thought it was just so-so. When the votes were tabulated five gave it a thumbs up, six voted sideways, and one abstained from voting.

We began the discussion by talking about the author Elizabeth Gilbert in general. One Page Turner aptly characterized her as “wacky”, while another thought of her as “self-obsessed”. A third described her as a person experiencing transition. She felt that Gilbert was a little immature and childlike in the first section of the book. In India, during the second section of the book, she began to mature and gain confidence. Our group mate described this as Gilbert’s teenage period. In Bali, the final section, Gilbert found love and “became a woman” or grownup, and her transition was complete.

We also talked about depression versus mental illness. Some of us thought that Gilbert suffered from depression, a not uncommon diagnosis, while a few others thought her depression and self-obsession might be signs of a more serious mental illness.

Next we discussed her marriages, her first, the termination of which lead to her year of travel and self-discovery, and her recent one, to Felipe, the man she met in Bali. Many of the Page Turners were happy to hear that the romance that began in the book continues and that the author has an everyday reminder of her life-changing experience.

From here we segued into Gilbert’s current life. In her book, she wrote that she and Felipe might split their time between four different locations, America, Australia, Bali, and Brazil. However, everything we have found says Gilbert lives either in Philadelphia or New Jersey, so we are not quite sure where she has ended up. She recently appeared at TED, an annual conference held in California promoting technology, entertainment, and design. In her talk on creativity, Gilbert elaborated on the idea that instead of one person being a genius, we all have genius within us.

One of the group members reminded us that a movie version of Eat, Pray, Love is going to be made, starring Julia Roberts. She was not quite sure she could see Roberts in the part, although others in the group could. We speculated on who else we might select for role and came up with the ideas of Sandra Bullock and Meg Ryan.

At this point we meandered into talks of the food Gilbert ate on her trips. We all envied the Italian desserts she had! We also discussed food-related fiction such as the mysteries of Diane Mott Davidson. One of our members has read several of her books and his description of them lead us to thinking about books for next year, and possibly including one of Ms. Davidson’s among them.

We rounded out the evening with travel stories of our own. One Page Turner described trips to Greece and the Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, while another related her recent trip to Michigan via Chicago and Arkansas. As we were concluding one group member made a final observation that Gilbert’s book was more of a spiritual quest than a travelogue, traveling was just the form her journey took. Many of us agreed with that.

Flyers for upcoming programming and copies of next month’s selection, The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, were also distributed. We are looking forward to hearing suggestions for next year’s reading list at the July meeting, so do not forget to bring your recommendations!