There’s one factor you could possibly say for positive concerning the author Elizabeth Gilbert, whose best-selling memoir—you may bear in mind Eat, Pray, Love?—introduced her worldwide fame, a well-liked film (through which she was performed by Julia Roberts, and her Bali-love-interest-and-future-husband by Javier Bardem), and a large fortune. I’ll get to that one factor you could possibly say in a second.
Twenty years in the past, Eat, Pray, Love chronicled Gilbert’s post-divorce seek for that means over the course of a yr spent in Italy, India, and Indonesia. It offered over 12 million copies and have become one thing of a vade mecum for 30-something ladies. (Journal historical past sidenote: A genesis of the e book was an essay Gilbert wrote for Attract in 2003, “The Street to Rapture,” about abandoning her life to seek out magnificence inside herself.) Gilbert’s new memoir, All of the Solution to the River, paperwork a really completely different chapter of her life, which concerned a passionate love affair gone very improper, then very proper, then very unhappy, and an intensive recalibration of her religious livelihood.
The story in a (supersize) nutshell: Gilbert fell deeply in love with Rayya Elias, her hairstylist-turned-best-friend, who described herself as “an ex-junkie, ex-felon, postpunk, glamour-bitch dyke,” and who was all of these issues, but in addition a proficient stylist, musician, storyteller, filmmaker, and in Gilbert’s estimation, a sort of sorceress, as nicely. When Elias is identified with terminal liver and pancreatic most cancers, Gilbert declares her love and leaves her marriage to be along with her. An alcohol and heroin addict in restoration, Elias begins utilizing once more however, refusing to let medication get in the way in which of their soul-match, Gilbert persists in supporting her beloved by her descent deeper into habit.
As you’ll be able to think about, situations go from unhealthy to worse to a lot worse, till Gilbert is pressured to confront her personal habit—to like and intercourse—which permits her, lastly, to let go of her outdated attachment to Elias and be taught to like her in a more healthy means. The lovers reconcile. Elias dies.
It’s a narrative as outdated as time—unlikely lovers meet, lovers surmount horrible obstacles, considered one of them dies. However this survivor goes on to seek out—even rejoice—a brand new strategy to flourish going ahead. In Gilbert’s uncooked telling, the journey is compulsively readable. So, right here’s the one factor you’ll be able to say with out reservation about Liz Gilbert: She by no means does something 100%. She does, the truth is, do every part 1,000%.
