The Humble Gourmand

For an adventure around the globe that touches upon gastronomy, you can’t do better than Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia, by magazine writer Elizabeth Gilbert.

This is a wonderful story of a journey to awakening and growth during a year of traveling abroad. The first third of this adventure focuses upon the hedonism of food and drink in Italy. Gastronomic pleasures abound through descriptions and narrative.

Indeed, food writing doesn’t come much better than this. Gilbert excels at describing the tastes, craft and smells of Italian cuisine. The author has come to Italy to cut loose completely and fill-up on everything that’s good eating. Her descriptions of her favorite gelato stores, ham, etc. are immediate and sensory. She captures the Italian spirit life’s celebration to a T: a mixture beauty, craftsmanship and giving one’s self over to a full appreciation of the senses.

Surely some of the “real” characters have been glamorized and maybe a tad exaggerated, (e.g. her friend Luka Spaghetti! and the language student twins she could have — IF she wanted them), but it all captures just the right spirit of celebration for Italian food and drink. With her keen observation and writing skills, no one captures it better than Gilbert.

The heavy lifting of emotional baggage comes in the following sections which search for a “higher power” in such places as an Indian ashram and “love and balance” studying with a Balinese guru. Characters are masterfully drawn and made poignant both by Gilbert within the fish-out-water and thirst for knowledge context, and also made universal to the reader. It’s a very special writer’s gift to be able to achieve this balance. Gilbert communicates her unvarnished and unfiltered thoughts on remarkable intimate and private level with the reader.

I heard this book on CD with Gilbert herself a great and very animated reader. She “plays” each of the characters she describes. Her writing always comes through to the reader/listener with a unique perspective, insight, and a voice that truly illuminates her points.

One big warning: the author’s gigantic id is also on full display here. Gilbert makes the needy and whiny Julie Powell (of Julie and Julia fame) seem like Mother Theresa. If you can put up with intense self-pity about the mysterious things “done to her” (these things mostly seem self-inflicted), which all lead to this global search, her story offers a wonderfully told adventure and transformation of the self. By the end of this journey, Gilbert has shed most of this baggage (although it seems like it could return at any minute — perhaps just her irritating way of dealing with adversity). Many “why’s” are never really explained, but the journey and writing are wonderful nonetheless. It’s a great escape book with a very strong Italian section clearly infatuated with Italian food and drink.

Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy India and Indonesia

By Elizabeth Gilbert
Publisher: Penguin (January 2007)
ISBN-10: 0143038419
ISBN-13: 978-0143038412

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