eat, pray, love by elizabeth gilbert

this episode we're journeying deep into the 2000s, to the land of ornamental chillies in bottles, oil-filled bath beads and thursday-evening chai lattes and orange and almond cakes with the girls at book club. For the theme knee's weak, mum's bookclub-etti we're reading the seminal white woman memoir – eat, pray, love by elizabeth gilbert. we'll dive into the ins and outs of elizabeth's escapades, eating in italy, praying in india and loving in indonesia and pose the question – is this a heart-warming and relatable journey of self-discovery, or a self-indulgent, surface-level exploitation of foreign cultures?

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Transcript

Laura 0:00

Step outside my mind's eye for a minute. Hello and welcome to Talk Lit Get Hit, a podcast where we read viral books the internet won't shut up about and rate them lit or shit.

Bridget 0:13

We're your hosts Bridget and Laura, lovers of sad girl fiction and tragic endings. Fearers of smut, urban fantasy, and the Who Did This To You trope.

Laura 0:21

Join us as we pick apart all the books the internet loves and embark on a journey to figure out why. This month we are reading a book that's been called Funny, Wise, Spiritual, Sexy, Cute, Confessional, Hilarious, Tender, and the book that Julia Roberts is giving all her girlfriends. It's surely the first book that springs to mind when you hear the phrase White Woman Book Club. It is, of course, Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Bridget, hello, hello.

Bridget 0:47

Hello, hello.

Laura 0:48

We're reading Eat Pray Love to tick off on the theme of Nee's Week Mum's Book Club Betty, which of course is kind of an homage to the early 2000s, 90s, 2010 kind of Oprah's book club classics that we were raised on. So, in the spirit of that discussion, would you like to share what you've been reading this month?

Bridget 1:07

I've had a pretty good reading month. I think I was a bit disappointed with the quality of books that I was reading up until about May, I'd say. And unfortunately a lot of them were podcast books. But I'm happy to report that since then I've had quite a few really, really good ones. I finally read Sulla by Tony Morrison. It's been on my TBR list for so long, and it was fantastic. I listened to the audiobook and I just think that the way that Tony reads the books is so soothing. I think she should just read everything. Ever like I'd love a bedtime podcast app sort of thing read by Tony Morrison. That would be so good. Another book that I ticked off my TBR was 10th of December by George Saunders. I didn't know anything about this book. I don't know where I found it, but I was obsessed with it from like the first chapter. And immediately I was like, oh my god, this is so good. And I texted you about it, and I was like, this is so good.

Laura 2:05

Yeah, you got me onto it. I don't know if I've shared this idea with you, but the audiobook is narrated by George Saunders, and the way that he does it is magnificent. And it's kind of like to me, if Tim Robinson of I Think You Should Leave Fame got into writing literature. That's that's how it reads, and I am obsessed with it. So great recommendation.

Bridget 2:27

I like it because the characters are silly, but he's not making fun of them in a mean way. Like I think he's accurately representing how ridiculous it is to be a teenage girl and like teenage boy, everything. Like the way he just writes is so interesting. I don't know anything about him. I don't know anything that he's written, but was a great book.

Laura 2:46

I always see that Lincoln in the Bardo book, which I think he wrote, um, which has never interested me until now.

Bridget 2:52

No, and if this wasn't on my 25 for 2025, I wouldn't have been interested in it either. And I can't remember putting it on there, so maybe maybe a ghost did it.

Laura 3:02

What was Sulla on your 25 for 20? I don't think it was. I had a Tony Morrison one too, but I think I had Beloved.

Bridget 3:09

Because I did sort of panic the other day and I was like, oh my god, I haven't really made any progress. So that's why I I started to read them this month. I'm glad that I did. Another book that I read was Sky Daddy by Kate Folk, and that was insane. Like I read that on a plane, and I was like, uh, is this plain kind of sexy? Because the way I mean, I assume that you'll read it at some point, maybe, maybe not. So the main character is sexually attracted to to planes and the way that she describes like what in particular she finds attractive about the planes, it's like, oh, okay. I don't get it, but I kind of get it. Like this coming off the back of being like people who enjoy credence are freaks. Well, my review was one sentence and it was I love freaks, so she's a real freak.

Laura 3:59

Consider me intrigued.

Bridget 4:00

Yeah. I did feel like I was sort of like tempting fate when I was reading it because the premise of the book is like when she was young, she flew on a plane, the plane nearly crashed. But she believes it's because it's like um her and the plane had this like special connection, so she's searching for that connection again. She wants to die in a plane crash. And I was like, should I be reading this on a plane? I don't know, but it was good. I also read Blue Sisters by Coco Malores. Is that how you say her name? I don't know, but I really, really loved that book. I got it from the library originally, and then I didn't pick it up for ages, and then my loan ran out and actually got a letter from the library being like, Please return this is a very popular book. So I was like, okay. But then I finished it on my Kindle and it was so good. I really, really liked it. I really want to buy a copy, but there's a few different covers to choose from, and they're all beautiful, but I think there's just one that is so stunning, and I think it's just like the single picture one. But I think like this is a case for maybe buying double.

Laura 4:59

They are both beautiful ones I've seen.

Bridget 5:01

So nice. So that's a really good book as well. I mean, everyone's been saying it, so it's nothing groundbreaking, but I stand by those people. And the last one that I read that I really enjoyed was Love Forms by Claire Adam. I've decided I'm gonna, I mean, at this point, I've read one, but I'm gonna try to read the books that have been long listed for the Book of Prize. And this is a book that I probably would have picked up anyway. It is, it is my kind of book, but it's about a woman from Trinidad and Tobago. When she was 16, she fell pregnant and she was pressured into giving up her baby. And it's telling the story 40 years later of her trying to find her long-lost adopted daughter. And I was really charmed by the main character. I think that like her narrative voice was so sweet and like motherly, but also in that way that reminds you that mothers are people too, if that makes sense. And I just really liked it. And I've never really read a book about Trinidad and Tobago, so that was interesting as well. That's all that I have been reading. How about you?

Laura 5:57

Yeah, I had quite a good reading month too. I've decided that I'm only gonna read books that have been recommended by you. Because I read quite a few that I'd seen you read, and they were all bangers. So going forth, recommendations from Bridget only. So two that I know you have definitely well, maybe three that I know you've four. Oh god. Six Any Takers for seven. There are four that I know that you've read. So the first is Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll, and I liked it for all the same reasons that you liked it. Um, I think it was so smart and it was so moving, which is something that you don't really expect from a book about a serial killer. I think it really towed the line between mystery and thriller and literary fiction, and it was just, yeah, accessible and beautifully written, and so nice to have a book in that vein centered from the victim's point of view. I also read All I Ever Wanted Was to Be Hot by Lucinda Frooms Price, and this was excellent as well. It was so funny, which I expected it to be because Frooms is so funny online and all of the writing that she does. But it's also very vulnerable and smart and well researched and informative, which was something that I didn't necessarily expect. So it was, you know, filled with all of this nostalgia about growing up in Australia in the 2000s, but then also dealing with her eating disorder and body dysmorphia and really candid conversations about plastic surgery and things like that. So it was excellent. Next on my Bridget list was Julie Chan is Dead, which is one that we received from an ARC. So this is by Lian Zhang, and um I really liked this. I think it was very unhinged, I think it was pretty plot-driven, pretty juicy. I think it reminded me a lot of the likes of Bunny and maybe Yellowface, although not quite like either. I think for me, those books did what it was doing maybe a little bit better. I didn't necessarily find myself connecting with any of the characters, but I was really happy to go along for the ride, so I would still recommend it because it was fun and it was silly. The last one on my Bridget reading list was Wandering Souls by Cecile Pinn, and I think I may have just started listening to this because I liked the cover and it was a short audiobook. It was about some orphaned Vietnamese siblings in the wake of the Vietnam War, and it kind of tracked them through their lives and interspersed it with some really graphic and vivid and distressing historical footnotes. Running alongside this are some scenes from one of their siblings who passed away in the journey from Vietnam to Hong Kong after the boat capsized. And those chapters are really sweet and sad and poignant and yeah, I just found it to be really moving. Definitely, once again, a perspective that I haven't really explored. I feel like I really took something from it.

Bridget 8:45

I actually realized I have a Laura book on my list that I forgot to mention. I read Greta and Valden and I loved it so much. I listened to it as an audiobook, and I haven't really read much fiction from New Zealand, but it was so nice. It just felt so familiar, and like I thought the sense of humour was exactly the same as mine. It was so funny. And I loved it so much. Might be one of my favourite books from the year.

Laura 9:11

So thanks. Wow. Just pumping up our own egos. You're so smart.

Bridget 9:18

No, you're so smart.

Laura 9:19

No, we're so smart. Well, speaking of favourite books of the year, I did read what I think may be one of mine, and that is The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey. I can't remember if I was reading this last time we recorded, but it was so excellent. I listened to it as an audiobook, and I think I'm very glad that I did because I had the rare experience of not just liking a male narrator, but loving a male narrator. So this book was absolutely heart-wrenching. I think it's kind of in the vein of never let me go. But the world that Catherine Chiji has created, like the picture that she's painted, was so terrifying and just taut. There was just this utter sense of dread and tension throughout the whole book. I'm not going to try to explain the plot because I can't. Because if we're honest, I gave it a go and it didn't work out. I will say that this book is told from the perspective of a young boy. And I don't often enjoy reading from the perspectives of children, but this is a hundred percent what sold this book to me. The the narration of Vincent was so sickeningly innocent. It like crushed my soul every time he thought something. And he's just being strung along, and you can see it and you know it, and it are it's just so painful to read. I could honestly just bring myself to tears if I thought about it long enough. But yeah, big recommend for the Book of Guilt. Other notable mentions to Sleep by Honor Jones and One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Accard. The Wife and the Window by Christian White, that was pretty good. A bit of a cozy suburban mystery. I mean, obviously it was pretty dark, but nothing too harrowing. And then I did read Talking at Night by Claire Daverly, which a lot of people were really excited for me to read, and I was really gloating about it on Instagram for a bit. Because initially I thought it was going to be the best book I've ever read. It really, really swept me up. I guess you could say it's for fans of books like One Day, Normal People, Love Rosie. It's it's a really similar narrative about, you know, a boy and a girl meet when they're teenagers and their lives keep crisscrossing as they grow older. I think the tone of the book worked really well when they were teenagers, but as it progressed, I just kind of felt like get your shit together. So it wore a bit thin by the end. But that said, I still rated it four stars, I think. So make it that what you will. Alright, I think it's time to get into the episode in earnest. So, Bridget, could I ask please for your initial thoughts, expectations, hopes, and dreams? Heading into reading Eat Prey Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Bridget 12:01

I have read this before in 2016. I know. I think I found the book in an op shop. I couldn't remember a single thing about it though. I don't think I enjoyed it at the time. I would have how old would I have been? 2016? I would have been 22, and I don't think it's really a book for a 22-year-old. So yeah, I don't think I would have gotten anything out of it. I think I just would have been reading it because I was trying to read every book in the world. I did not have high hopes the second time around. I think if I've read a book and I can't remember it, then it's probably for a good reason. I also was thinking that it probably hasn't aged very well.

Laura 12:39

How about you? Um, well, I had never read it, and I think for most of my life I've maintained a pretty holier than thou. Like, I can't believe you would like that type stance on this book. I think some of my first impressions of Eat Prey Love, whether they were tied to the book or the movie, were from people saying, Oh my god, like it's just this white woman's journey. Like it's just so insipid. And so I was very happy to jump on that train. That said, coming to it now, coming to it as a 31-year-old woman, I was a little bit concerned that it would resonate with me and I would have to go on the record to say that. I'm drawn to media about upheaving your life and following your dreams and exploring spirituality and finding out what's important to you. Uh, I read a book a couple of years ago, I think it was called Nothing Bad Ever Happens here by Heather Rose, who is an Australian author. And I think on paper it sounds quite similar. So she has a terrible tragedy in her personal life and kind of turns to spirituality. I think she also spends some time in an ashram at a yoga retreat type thing, learning about herself and expanding her worldview. And I found that book really rewarding. But when I looked at the reviews of it, they were quite critical of it. A lot of the same criticisms that I thought I'd seen for Eat Pray Love, like that kind of this is so self-centered, this is so surface level, etc. etc. And so that made me quite scared that I would like it, basically.

Bridget 14:08

We would eat, pray, and love it if you didn't have this book spoiled for you. In this episode, we'll be discussing this book in great detail. So if you'd like it to remain a mystery until you finally lay your hands on it, hit pause, subscribe to the show, and come back when you're finished reading.

Laura 14:23

A quick word of warning: our episode on Eat Pray Love may include discussions of suicidal thoughts, grief, classism, mental illness, body shaming, and sexual content.

Bridget 14:33

In her early 30s, Elizabeth Gilbert had everything a modern American woman was supposed to want: husband, country home, successful career. But instead of feeling happy and fulfilled, she was consumed by panic and confusion.

Laura 14:45

This wise and rapturous book is the story of how she left behind all these outward marks of success and set out to explore three different aspects of her nature against the backdrop of three different cultures. Pleasure in Italy, devotion in India, and on the Indonesian island of Bali, a balance between worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence.

Bridget 15:06

Okay, Laura, we have finished reading all 348 pages of travel stories. I would love to hear your thoughts on Eat Prey Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

Laura 15:16

I would love to share them with you. I am relieved to report that I was not sucked in to the cult. The cult of Eat Prey Love, and I struggle to understand how so many people were because I don't know what the point of this book was. It was a mess. It was really a mess. Yeah. All of the criticisms were true. I don't really know how else to add more to that right now. What what do you think about it?

Bridget 15:46

I enjoyed about half of Italy. Then I mentally switched off until halfway through India. And then from that point onwards, I actively hated it.

Laura 15:57

I think that's the same journey I went on too, because halfway through Italy, and then she started being like, They're eating cream puffs. And I thought, shut up, Elizabeth. Maybe you'll be better in a new country. And then she got to India, and there was so much that I was reading where I was like, why are we still talking about this? Or why did I need to know that? Or what just what possessed you to write that out? And what possessed everyone involved with this book to tell you that it deserved to be printed. And then yeah, Bali was a shit show.

Bridget 16:29

It reminded me of trying to read Before the Coffee Gets Cold back when we first started the podcast, where I was like headphones on, just flipping through the pages trying to finish it. So I normally try to read podcast books twice and normally try to listen to the audiobook and read either a physical book or a Kindle copy, but I couldn't finish it twice. I finished it once and I thought I am not reading this again. I had a little bit of both. I had audiobook book in between, Kindle copy as well. And I mean I was bored. At some point I did start to feel a little bit bad about my opinions on the book because I was wondering, like I do so often, why do people like this book? So I went onto TikTok and I thought if I tried to see if I could find some sort of insight. And I found a comment from somebody who said it will appeal to different generations differently. As a child of the 80s who grew up with women who had no choices, this was inspiring and actually inspired a lot of my friends to leave terrible relationships. And I thought, well, yeah, like I can't begrudge people for feeling some sort of empowerment or maybe a sense of belonging from reading this book. But then I read the very next comment and it said, maybe I'm your age, and I found it to be an insufferable narcissist. So then I was like, okay, well, I'll just feel my opinion and that's fine. So when I was reading the Kindle copy, it was the 10th anniversary edition, and I thought these comments from Elizabeth Gilbert might make us feel a little bit better about going into yet another episode where we're just gonna hate on the book for the whole time. So she says, but with Eat Prey Love, my feeling was this. I had no business reading this book again because it wasn't really mine anymore. You see, very quickly upon publication, Eat Prey Love was gobbled up by the world, and the world made it theirs. Theirs to love, theirs to hate, theirs to emulate, theirs to parody.

Laura 18:22

I mean it's nice to see her giving us permission to hate on it because once again, I mean, this is a memoir, and I was dealing with that tricky feeling of what do you do when you don't like a book and it's a memoir, and what do you do when the reason you don't like it is because of the protagonist who is the person. Yes. I don't know. I don't know what you do, but I mean for me, yeah, that was a real overarching detractor from unfortunately the entire book. It was this kind of what I perceived to be this really smug, kind of self-satisfied tone that the whole book was written in.

Bridget 18:59

I think at some point, if you're going to accept an exorbitant amount of money to write a book, release that book, publish that book, promote that book, and then sell the rights to a movie. I think unfortunately at some point you sort of lose ownership of that story.

Laura 19:13

Well, let's flash back to the 16th of February 2006 when Eat Pray Love was first published. Elizabeth Gilbert begins this novel as a 34-year-old woman who was educated, had a home, a husband, and a successful career as a writer. To her credit, Elizabeth Gilbert has been upfront and was upfront in the novel about the fact that she requested funding from her publisher to travel and to write a novel on said travels. This advance was allegedly 200k. When you consider how large she's living, you know, she's renting an apartment in Bali, she's eating these extravagant meals in Italy, even the fact that she's traveling for a year. She's at a yoga retreat in India. It certainly paints a picture of privilege.

Bridget 19:54

Yeah, and I think that most of the criticism that I have read and I've seen about this book is the fact that she is just a privileged white woman waxing lyrical about her year off from the world. Once again, in the preface, she does talk about this, and she says, a good deal of the criticism levelled against Eprey Love has been about my extraordinary privilege. And I have to say in response, I get it. The woman who went on this trip was exceedingly lucky. Lucky is all hell. Reading about this journey again drove that point home for me more deeply than ever, because who gets to do such a thing? Who has twelve free months to spare just to kick around the globe? Who has the freedom or the money for that? Who has weeks and weeks upon end to wander through Italy, learning a new language? Who has months and months to study meditation in India and Indonesia with some of the world's greatest teachers? So I mean at least she's aware.

Laura 20:45

Yeah, at least she's aware. And I mean I do think understanding your privilege is a journey, and I think you can't always have perspective on an event until after it's passed. So while she may have been grateful, she might not have realized the full, I guess, scale of what was enabling her to live that life and do those things at the time.

Bridget 21:03

I think it would also be interesting to hear her thoughts on this now, because those comments they were from 2016, and of course the original book is 2006. The progression and thinking of about privilege from 2006 to now has been quite a big one. And so it would be interesting to hear her perspective in 2025.

Laura 21:24

Yeah, I would say, even though I don't really view her very favourably after this one particular slice of her writing from 20 years ago, other things I've seen about her paint her as quite a like thoughtful and progressive person. So I wouldn't be surprised if her perspectives on this have shifted again. So Eat Prey Love is written about Elizabeth Gilbert's journey to self discovery across the three eyes Italy, India, and Indonesia. And so the book is broken up into three sections to cover off on each country. And so we thought for something different we'd break up our discussion into. Into the same three sections. So this means we're going to start with Italy, which was Eat. She spent roughly four months in Italy. It's where her journey began. So you mentioned earlier that Italy had you for a little bit. You enjoyed the start of Italy and then it was kind of rapidly downhill. So would you like to elaborate on that?

Bridget 22:17

I think it's always lovely to hear about somebody in such an idyllic place, eating delicious food, meeting interesting people, seeing beautiful buildings, historical buildings. But at some point, when that's all you do, it just starts to grate a little bit. I think as a white woman, there's a few different paths you can go on when you choose like a country to hyperfixate on for a little bit. I think you could choose Italy or Greece. That's like one path you could choose. I think another choice is Ireland. Yes. A lot of people love that. I think if you're a man, your choice is Japan or America. So yeah, there is that special brand of white woman who is obsessed with all things Italy, Greece. There is an influencer that both you and I follow, I'm pretty sure, that um likes to spend a few months of every year in Italy and Greece, and I think it's kind of a fetish for some people. Like they take photos of old Italian people and they're like, oh, look at this cute old lady. And I'm like, Yeah, but that's a stranger you're photographing. Like it's a bit weird. They're lovely photos, but at some point I'm like, no, they're just people living their life. I think because it was like something new. Sometimes I thought the writing was slightly interesting, but it just never progressed into anything.

Laura 23:33

I feel exactly the same. I found her initial feelings about her divorce and her relationship with David and her depression and what was pushing her to feel this need to leave her life. And then the start of her time in Italy, like you said, it was lovely to read about. It was cozy. Like I felt like I was there. I loved reading about the food. I could feel the sun. I could hear the sound of the streets. I could feel, I thought, her genuine appreciation for being there for a little bit. And again, I think that kind of has to do with her tone of voice. And I I feel so truly terrible saying this. But after reading the three sections of this book, not to jump ahead, I just feel like I know who Elizabeth Gilbert is in the social setting, and she would exhaust me in five minutes flat. She is the person based off this story alone who always finds a way to spin the conversation back around to a time where she was doing something virtuous or something funny. I know obviously you do have to center yourself when you're writing a memoir, but I couldn't really see the point of basically all of the stories in this book apart from kind of showing off some feature about her personality. I don't really think that I learned anything about her friends or the culture. There were some fairly funny and reasonably profound, you know, one-liners scattered throughout, but it's it was the same kind of like self-help, um, watered-down, like guru stuff that you could get from almost any book in the same vein.

Bridget 25:03

I think where she started to lose me was that spiritual reflection kind of stuff. I'm not a religious person or a spiritual person in the slightest. I obviously respect people that have that all-encompassing faith, but I don't want to read about it in the way that it was written in this book. I think that meeting the guru and talking about religion without ever really saying anything about religion and sort of being, I don't know if scared is the right word, but like sort of being like, uh, am I gonna uh am I gonna offend somebody? No, I'm not. I was like, just say it like one way or the other. Another pattern that started to emerge when we were in Italy was her tendency to revolve her whole life around men and around sex. And I know she says this, but all you're thinking about is sex and your ex-boyfriend and your ex-husband. And she would meet a man and she'd think, He's kind of hot, but I'm gonna have sex with him, but I can't have sex with him. Like, look around, look at where you are. Gotta take the old girl out for a spin. Yeah. So that started degrade on me. Like, she met the twins and she thought, Wow, I'm gonna have a heart threesome with twins, and like they just try to learn English. Stop trying to sexualise people all the time. There was so much overt sexualization of these Italian men. It was a bit much for me.

Laura 26:28

One of the things I wasn't sure about coming into the book was that I had seen a lot of criticism that it was reasonably racist in its sort of summation of these three different countries. And I was like, Well, I don't know, I don't really think I know enough about any of these countries to say whether it is or it isn't. But I think having read it, I'm like, Elizabeth, come on. Like she painted in such really like cliched, broad strokes, and made such sweeping statements about, for example, men in Italy all being Casanovas that won't take no for an answer, or um like sleazy, skeezy guys that sat on every corner and like, hey Bella, you're so beautiful. Yeah, and as soon as I started reading it and reading things in that vein, I was like, oh, okay. No, I I see the criticism.

Bridget 27:17

I think it just never went any more than skin deep because it was just full of these stereotypes and full of these surface level observations. Like it sort of reminded me of somebody, and we all know somebody like this who would look at an old person in the park and just think, oh, isn't it sad? They're sitting by themselves, but then like walk off and never think about it again. Like it was so basic, and we never really got to know anybody. And if we did, it was always gonna be a man.

Laura 27:45

Yeah, because I think like it's still that same thing I was saying before where every character that's introduced or every conversation she has is just a vehicle to tell you something about herself. It's always like, I went in the car with so-and-so, and he said, It's okay, Liz, you're a beautiful woman, you're gonna meet someone. Or, oh, it's okay, Liz. Like, you give too much of yourself, hold something back that's yours only, or you know, like it was just you're so selfless and beautiful. Ha ha, don't cry, you're too sexy to cry, kind of again and again and again. Yes. If we could track back to the spirituality, it's not very much at the forefront of the Italy Eat chapter.

Bridget 28:24

No.

Laura 28:25

And this is one of the things that I thought may actually draw me in because although I wouldn't consider myself a spiritual or religious person, I do definitely find that that line of thinking around you know, like droplets in the ocean and everything's out of your control and be one with the universe, like all life is sacred type thing, on a really surface level resonates with me. And it was actually one of the things that I enjoyed about that book I mentioned earlier, Nothing Bad Ever Happens Here. From almost the first time any sort of spirituality was brought into this book, it was like, no. This is quite long, and I'll try to paraphrase where possible. But she says, at the beginning of my spiritual experiment, I didn't always have such faith in this internal voice of wisdom. I remember once reaching for my private notebook in a bitter fury of rage and sorrow and scrawling a message to my inner voice, to my divine interior comfort that took up an entire page in capital letters. Side note, she loved capital letters. She really did. The message said, I do not fucking believe in you. There's a lot of exclamation marks too. After a moment, still breathing heavily, I felt a clear pinpoint of light ignite within me, and I found myself writing this amused and ever calm reply. Who are you talking to then? I haven't doubted its existence again since. So anyway, so then she's like, Yep, alright, I've I'm locked in on this. I'm just gonna write to my internal voice again, my internal guardess, if you will.

Bridget 29:56

I mean, yeah, it's we all know what the undertones are.

Laura 30:01

Yeah. And it's not good for the school.

Bridget 30:03

No.

Laura 30:05

So this was utterly haunting to me, and I'll explain why later. She says, This is what I find myself writing to myself on the page. I am here. I love you. I don't care if you need to stay up all night. I don't care if you need to stay up crying all night long. I will stay with you. If you need the medication again, go ahead and take it. I will love you through all that as well. If you don't need the medication, I will love you too. There's nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death, I will still protect you. I'm stronger than depression, and I am braver than loneliness, and nothing will ever exhaust me. Now this dredged up a visceral memory of that video that was circulating quite a few years ago now. It was like possibly Vine era. It was a kid, presumably sending a video to his girlfriend or crush. He had like short curly hair, and it was like, hey baby girl. He's got that kind of starry-eyed, idiotic expression that boys have before they try to give you a kiss. Boys aged 15. Yeah. And it's pretty excruciating. So I will play a small section of it now.

Bridget 31:18

After they've just said, I like someone. You know her really well. Exactly.

Video Man 31:24

Hi, baby girl. Everything's okay, I promise. I forgive you. It's okay, don't worry about it. Everything's gonna be okay. I love you. I love you so much. I love you more than there are brains of sound of every beach. Of every planet. Of every galaxy of the universe.

Laura 31:54

Okay, so that was 30 seconds of a video that is a minute 41. But that's the vibe. So uh I was understandably repulsed, but unfortunately for me, this inner voice comes back again and again, and it only gets worse. It is a shame, isn't it?

Bridget 32:11

It it felt like eerily reminiscent of Tumblr as well, even though it was pre-Tumbler. But I just think this is a time capsule for, you know, like 200 years time when we have destroyed all of humanity and there's like the dregs of society are left, and the aliens come and they're like, hey, what hey guys, what happened here? Like, what's this place called the USA? What's this about? We could be like, have this. This will tell you everything you need to know about the culture of the white women at the time. And I it's it's spot on. If I said to AI, write me a book, write me some travel memoirs from a white woman in the early 2000s, this is what we'd get.

Laura 32:51

Absolutely.

Bridget 32:52

I mean, she's she's knows a target audience, I guess. She is the target audience.

Laura 32:56

It was so of the time. Something that stood out to me was that she had a couple of mentions of crying with her friends after the horrible Republican president was elected. Yeah. And I was like, who who was it? Oh, obviously it was George Bush. I know, I was trying to think of it as well. I was like, I was like, Trump wasn't in power then. Right? Yeah. So I mean, that was weirdly reassuring because we all think we've lived through the worst of it. And it can, I mean, not comforting that it can get worse and worse, but there's solidarity there.

Bridget 33:26

I think we've talked about this at in some episode before, but talking about the sort of um perspective of I voted for Obama, I think it was in the Yellow Face episode. Um, and also maybe a little bit in the romantic comedy episode. It's the same sort of attitude, I think, to politics where it's like, yeah, I'm informed. I vote Democrat. It is so interesting how like there is narrow political comment to be made throughout the rest of the book, even though there's some things that she could be commenting on, but it's like, it's okay, guys. I voted for the good guys.

Laura 34:00

Yeah, I mean, one of those things was that one of her friends wanted to throw a Thanksgiving party with the big American turkey and all the trim-ins. And she had some sort of line of thinking around like, I love Thanksgiving. It's one of the last good holidays. It hasn't been commodified. It's simply about friendship and celebrating what we love about each other. And I thought, yeah, that is really of the minute, hey. Not a not a deeper line of thinking to be seen. I think in Italy, when she goes to the football game with her friend Luca, is probably about the point in time when she really started to lose me. And I think this is when her need to just vomit out what she knows became really evident to me. And it was when I really started thinking, why? Why do we need to know this? She's at the football game, she's still on her learning Italian grind, and she's asking Luca, what does this word mean? What does that word mean? It's all of the words that she's hearing around the stadium. There's an old man sitting behind her, unleashing a lot of commentary about the game. And this section of the book says, I would write it down, then shut my eyes and listen to some more of the old man's rant, which went something like, Die, die, die, Albertini, die, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All in Italian, which means obviously nothing to us. So she writes out this whole paragraph. Then she says, which I can attempt to translate as come on, come on, come on, Albertini, come on, okay, okay, my boy, perfect, brilliant, brilliant, come on, come on, go, go, in the goal. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's like half a page. And then it's like, in the goal, in the goal, in the goal. Fuck you. There's lots of capitals here. It's a lot of stuff that gave me so much nothing. And I just have to ask, like, I like so much of this book, who is it for, if not for her own self-satisfaction? Yeah.

Bridget 35:50

And I think that again is that whole thing of being obsessed with Italian people without remembering that they're just people.

Laura 35:57

I do think she seems to genuinely fall into cultural appreciator. Yeah. I don't think she's intentionally harmfully racist or anything like that. I think she seems like a good person. I just think she's either unaware or not honest about her perspectives or her place in these cultures.

Bridget 36:15

Yeah. It also is genuinely funny to imagine her in a sea of Italian football fans with a little notebook writing down something and then like hugging it to her chest and thinking, oh, I love this place. It's quite an entertaining thought. The next segment of the book is the India segment. And so she is spending four months in India to pray. She heads to an ashram, which, to my understanding, is some sort of Indian spiritual place that benefits a lot from Western people bringing their money and services and skills to the place. But I mean, I don't know much about it because we didn't learn much about it, did we?

Laura 37:01

No, that's so true. We really didn't. I was diligently trying to Google what is Ashram, and then you finished with your final magnificent point, and I was like, uh, we don't care.

Bridget 37:13

This was a really weird section of the book. I think there were so many characters that didn't really say too much. Nothing much happened. What was that the point? Like, was it meant to show the sort of mundanity of day-to-day life when you're trying to get in touch with your inner self? I don't know. I couldn't tell you.

Laura 37:33

I think the time in India is where I really started to think, God, she's got to be taking liberties because we encountered quite a few different characters. Um, and one of them was Richard from Texas. And she lets us know at the start of the book that Richard is, in fact, his real name, although she's changed plenty of others. And Richard from Texas seems to be a bit of a Matthew McConaughey type. He's always spouting wisdom, like, you know, we gotta wake up in the morning, sugar. You gotta go outside and give your horse a cube and then give that horse a pat on the rump and just get back in the saddle, baby girl. Before you brush your teeth, you gotta open your mouth. Exactly. It's about pretty much all Richard ever says.

Bridget 38:13

Yeah, I have to say Richard from Texas was a real low light for me.

Laura 38:18

Well, it just like this is when I really started to think, hang on, hang on, hang on, Elizabeth. You do not have perfect recall. Yeah. How? He just he never shut up. He never shut up. So many of the other characters never shut up. And I guess, you know, if if you've got an advance to write a book, then I guess you would want to be recording conversations quite urgently as they happen. So there is a chance that she's more diligent about getting these things on paper in an accurate and timely way than you or I would be, just trying to remember conversations we had last week. Three months ago. Yeah. Even today, like two seconds ago. What did we just say? I have no idea. But like the specificity and that sort of poetry of some of the things that Richard from Texas comes out with. I just think you're having a laugh, Elizabeth. You're absolutely making this up. And I don't know if Richard is named because you're in cahoots with him, but he dishes out some really like poignant life advice. If I may, there's a whole lecture he gives her about what a soulmate is when she's crashing out once again about David. And there's just such a rhythm to it, there's so much flair that I just thought I could never write a memoir. For the millionth time in my life I've thought this. I thought you're just taking such liberties with the words and perspectives of other people. And yes, you may get them to read it prior to publication. Have to assume Elizabeth did here. But it just oh it it doesn't sit right with me. So people think a soulmate is your perfect fit, and that's what everyone wants. But a true soulmate is a mirror. The person who knows everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soulmate is probably the most important person you'll ever meet because they tear down the walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soulmate forever? Nah, too painful. Soulmates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you and then leave. A soulmate's purpose is just to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break open your heart so new light can get in. Make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life and then introduce you to your spiritual master.

Bridget 40:29

There's no way. It just seems like that's he's describing a manic episode. Break open your life, break your heart open so a new light can get in. Make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life. You shouldn't want that. That's not something you should want. No, Richard. That's not what, as he said, everyone wants. No, that's not what I want. I'm good, thanks, Richard. I don't want to know a spiritual master. Have you got any other good Richard from Texas quotes?

Laura 40:58

Oh, there was one that was like, that's a problem with you. You bring your wish button where your backbone ought to be, or something like that.

Bridget 41:06

And can we talk about the nickname groceries?

Laura 41:09

Oh.

Bridget 41:10

Hate it. Hate it. Groceries. Groceries. Groceries. And the way she said it in the audiobook was so smug as well.

Laura 41:20

Groceries. Off the back of that excellent accent I've just done, I think this is a good time to talk about the audiobook and her insistence on doing the accents. We have a lot of different cultures in this book. And she gives them all a go. She does. She tries her best. I don't really know how to feel about it. Except for the fact that I sort of thought, oh, I don't know if you can do that.

Bridget 41:44

Are we doing this? Is that what's going on? They weren't even especially bad. The Indian and the Indonesian accents were bad, but I don't know if they were bad because they didn't sound like the people that she was trying to emulate, or just the fact that we shouldn't be doing these kinds of accents. Because most of the time these accents are being done by white people to make fun of the people.

Laura 42:08

Yeah, I was thinking I could be particularly sensitive to it, having grown up in Australia, where I think those cultures are regularly mocked on the basis of their accent, among other things. Yes. I just thought it was a really confident choice to not only narrate your own book, granted it's a memoir, but to impersonate the people that you're mentioning.

Bridget 42:28

I think she was really enabled when she was in India. She had some pretty zany people around her. She had Richard from Texas. She had The Plumber from New Zealand. She was given a position of power as little Susie Cream cheese.

Laura 42:46

Disgusting. I almost vomited when they said that. Why would you call people that? It feels mean.

Bridget 42:54

It feels like they're making fun of you, babe.

Laura 42:55

It doesn't feel good.

Bridget 42:57

Someone call me little Susie Cream cheese. Not happy. Um, there was like someone from South Africa, there was like a nun, there was all these people that were just like mentioned maybe twice. The Russian lady. The Russian lady, so funny. I think one of the most out there things that happened in this part of the book was definitely where she was led to a secret little place by the plumber from New Zealand, and it turned out to be a rooftop with a beautiful view. And she decided to meditate, and she decided to invite her ex-husband to meditate with her, or rather, the soul or the light within her ex-husband to meditate. I couldn't handle this.

Laura 43:51

I have the quote. She says, And then, to my surprise, still in meditation, I did an odd thing. I invited my ex husband to please. Please join me up here on this rooftop in India. I asked him if he would be kind enough to meet me up here for this farewell event. Then I waited until I felt him arrive, and he did arrive. His presence was suddenly absolute and tangible. I could practically smell him. I said, Hi sweetie. I almost started to cry right then, but quickly I realized I didn't need to. Tears are a part of this bodily life, and the place where these two souls were meeting that night in India had nothing to do with the body. These two people who needed to talk to each other up there on the roof were not even people anymore.

Bridget 44:35

If we entertained for like half a second that that actually did happen, because I think a lot of these things in this book did not happen. There's no way. But if we entertain the thought that his soul met her soul on the rooftop in India, can you imagine how he would be feeling back in New York? Like he probably wasn't meditating because he wasn't like the Dementis sucking the soul out of me.

Laura 45:02

We need an ambulance. He's at the dinner in Manhattan. Slumped over the cables. Chaos in a lot of Manhattan. I didn't even think of that. Hopefully that didn't scare anyone.

Bridget 45:23

And it's so funny as well because she met the guru after she left the husband. And so the husband doesn't know about any of this. Like he is not aware of any sort of spiritual journey. It's also funny to me because up until this point, she hasn't been upset about the husband at all. She's only been upset about David. That's so that made me laugh. Why is she not getting the soul of David up on the roof? She didn't give a shit about the husband. And like I uh I'm not taking the husband's side because he sounds like he was kind of shit too. But weird that she's all of a sudden upset about the husband.

Laura 45:59

It is weird. It's really, really weird. And it does get weirder, unfortunately.

Bridget 46:04

But like once again, she's centering her healing around the husband. Forget about the men, think about yourself. Please, Elizabeth.

Laura 46:13

And I know we both said neither of us are spiritual people, but I do think so much of spirituality is just being able to have conviction in the positive things that you think, believing whatever narrative you tell yourself. Because she goes on to say, like she watches the two blue souls circle each other, merge, and divide, and she says they knew everything long ago and they will always know everything. They didn't need to forgive each other, and they were born forgiving each other. And to me, that just reads like I'm melting down and I'm at whatever, I'm over it. Or you know what, it's gonna be fine, it's okay. And I think there are people in this world that tell themselves those things with more conviction than others. I don't think, you know, that's not really to detract from the benefits of spirituality. I would really love to be able to have that kind of power of mind, but did his soul really leave his body? I I'm not so sure. Hopefully not. For his sake it didn't. After all this, she says, so I stood up and I did a handstand on my guru's roof to celebrate the notion of liberation. I felt the dusty tiles under my hands. I felt my own strength and balance. I felt the easy night breeze on the palms of my bare feet. This kind of thing, a spontaneous handstand, isn't something a disembodied cool blue soul can do, but a human being can do it. We have hands. We can stand on them if we want to. That's our privilege. That's the joy of a mortal body, and that's why God needs us, because God loves us to feel things through our hands.

Bridget 47:41

When she decided to chuck a handstand, I couldn't help thinking of that Lindsay Lohan movie Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen, you know, the when she's setting out the front of the hotel or whatever, she runs up the tree and does a backflip. Yeah.

Laura 47:57

I'm surprised she didn't try to spin that narrative, to be honest. She's doing quirky things left, right, and centre in India. And on page 176, she says, This morning I overslept. Which is to say, slarth that I am. I dozed until the ungodly hour of 4 15 AM. So anyway, she's missing some of the stuff she's meant to be doing. And she finds that her roommate has left the room before her and locked her in. Had locked her in, allegedly. Allegedly. Without knowing. She says, My first thought was, if there ever was a good excuse not to go to Guragita, this would be it. My second thought though, well, it wasn't even a thought. It was an action. I jumped out the window. To be specific, I crawled outside over the railing, gripping it with my sweaty palms and dangling there from two stories up over the darkness for a moment, only then asking myself the reasonable question, why are we jumping out of this building? Another of her stories where I'm thinking, why do we need to know this? What's the point? What's going on? I'm kind of jumping around here, but while I was reading this book, I was doing some research alongside it. And before I made it to India, I was looking for some more information on uh, I guess kind of further feedback related to her spiritual tokenism and cultural appropriation, if you will. And I found this article on Christianity Today of all places that seems to sum up like a maybe like a low-level ickiness I had with this book. The quote says, Gilbert offers a self-made spirituality, one that encourages readers to cherry pick whatever rituals from various traditions make them feel better without examining those traditions' histories or ways they flat out contradict each other. For Gilbert, faith is primarily therapeutic, not theistic. And I thought, oh, that's an interesting point. I'd love to learn more about that later. And then I kind of laughed when I got to this bit in India where she says, I think you have every right to cherry pick when it comes to moving your spirit and finding peace in God. You can take whatever works from wherever you can find it, and you can keep moving forward toward the light. She goes on about this for a fair while, but the bit that really sent me over the edge was when she chooses to end this chapter by saying, That's me in the corner, in other words. That's me in the spotlight, choosing my religion. Banger. And I don't know if I can do it. What a weird choice.

Bridget 50:27

We are nearly out of India, but I think there's one more thing we need to talk about before we head over to Indonesia. And that is the friendly little goodbye poem that she was given from her friend, the poet slash plumber from New Zealand. And before I read this out, I just want to say that if someone wrote a poem about me that was like this, I would think, does that person hate me? 24 lines. Elizabeth, betwixt and between. Italian phrases and barley dreams. Elizabeth, between and betwixt. Sometimes as slippery as a fish. I'm sorry.

Laura 51:16

Slippery in what context? I'm a fish. Am I sweaty? Do you hate me?

Bridget 51:21

To Elizabeth's credit, she doesn't hate this poem. She takes it on board. She says, I've spent so much time these last years wondering what I'm supposed to be. A wife? A mother? A lover? A celibate? An Italian? A glutton? A traveller? An artist? A yogi. But I'm not any of these things. At least not completely. And I'm not crazy Aunt Liz either. I'm just a slippery anti-visin, betwixt and between a student on the ever-shifting border near the wonderful, scary forest of the new.

Laura 51:50

Yeah, that's what I mean about her. I think she has every ability to be like, you know what? It is a compliment. Yeah. Thank you. It's impressive, no matter what said.

Bridget 51:59

It's it's very impressive.

Laura 52:04

So we finally made it to Indonesia, Bali, to be specific, where Elizabeth spent four months and explored love. How are you feeling at this point in the book?

Bridget 52:14

Oh, this point, yeah, this was my active hatred part. And that's all I'll say.

Laura 52:22

This is where she really became truly insufferable. Yes. It starts with her blundering into Bali being like, lol, I literally never researched how to get here. I just thought they would be so pleased to see me. I could stay forever, but turns out I can only stay for 30 days.

Bridget 52:36

Yeah. I tried to bribe someone, but it didn't work. I went to Bali, and maybe it's changed, but I have to say I found the airport genuinely quite stressful. When you leave the arrivals hall, you're met with like a sea of drivers yelling at you, and it's quite overwhelming. I think that Elizabeth Gilbert doesn't have a sense of safety. I think the way that she plans or doesn't plan and just wanders around hoping for the best is quite dangerous. Even though she's not offering it as advice, I think it's not a good thing to be to be telling single, vulnerable women to just go to Bali without a plan.

Laura 53:16

I mean, you can probably imagine what it would have been like when the eat prey love phenomenon kicked off in full force. How many people with good or bad intentions they would have been offering like eat prey love tours or experiences in their city ready with open arms to take advantage of that situation?

Bridget 53:33

Yeah. And I think the opposite is also true. I feel like there would have been a lot of people living in Bali and India that were being taken advantage of. Their kindness would have been taken advantage of by Western women travelling as some sort of pilgrimage to complete the eat prey love journey.

Laura 53:50

Yeah, I'm not too sure how soon the eat prey love phenomenon would have unfolded post-publication, but she mentions at the time of writing it's reasonably soon after the Bali bombing. So in Bali, there's lots of chatter about business being down, people falling on hard times and struggling to make ends meet.

Bridget 54:10

I think we had to talk about the reason why Elizabeth has decided to end her year of travel in Bali, and the reason is because about two years ago she met a medicine man named Kutut, and Kutut gave her a prophecy, if you like, that she would return to Bali, live with him and his family, teach him English, and just live the life in Bali. So she has returned. She does know his name, she knows vaguely where the village is, but she doesn't have any other information. So she finds her way to Katut, and hilariously, he does not remember her. So funny. I felt truly evil for the joy I found in that. Eventually he does sort of maybe piece together who she is, and she spends a few hours there every day talking to him, giving him company, learning about his life, learning about his family, helping him photocopy his medical texts and witnessing what he does day to day.

Laura 55:12

I've spoken in the other sections both about how she has this really surface-level perspective on these cultures that she's partaking in, and also how I feel that she's taking liberties with her interpretations of these people. And I think this is really perfectly exhibited in her portrayal of Katut. I don't think there's really a single character from India, from Indonesia, from Italy that she presents to us that isn't a caricature that basically anyone could have fabricated using what they know about that country. She does absolutely zero to challenge your perspective there. And so when we're talking about Katut, there is an incredibly long section where she's taken it upon herself to write out his life story. I'll read you a very small portion of it. Here is Katutlier's life story, pretty much as he tells it. It is nine generations that my family is a medicine man. My father, my grandfather, my great grandfather, all of them is a medicine man. They all want me to be medicine men because they see I have light. They see I have beautiful and I have intelligent. But I do not want to be medicine man. Too much study, too much information, and I don't believe in medicine man. I want to be painter, I want to be artist, I have good talent with this. This stretches on for three pages, which is too many pages in my mind. And I also don't know how I feel about her transcribing his words in that way, using that kind of broken English. I think most of my discomfort here comes from the fact that I think she probably can't remember it, so she's probably taking liberties and embellishing it. But I don't know. I mean maybe I'm just being a bit dramatic. How did it make you feel strange at all?

Bridget 56:53

Yeah, I it did feel strange. I thought, like you. There's no way that you have remembered this exactly as he has said it. So are you just taking out articles, prepositions, and using incorrect tense to to portray a sense of authenticity? Because if so, I think we could do without it. I think that we all know that he wouldn't have been speaking, you know, perfect, grammatically correct Queen's English. But I don't know if we needed to have the inaccuracies. But like you, I'm not sure if this is really a problem or if it's just a non-issue.

Laura 57:26

I mean, take it with a grain of salt, because I'm reading it from the AI summary, but it does say while Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat Pray Love is a memoir, it's not a verbatim word-for-word account of every conversation she had, obviously. Gilbert has acknowledged that she took some liberties with dialogue to enhance the narrative and create a more engaging reading experience. She aimed to capture the essence of her experience and conversations rather than recreate them with perfect accuracy.

Bridget 57:50

And I think that's what we're feeling. I did think it was quite funny and quite like representative of who I imagine Elizabeth Gilbert to be, at least at this point in her life. At the start, she spent, you know, three to four hours with him every afternoon. The second that she sort of got into that situation ship relationship with Felipe, it was like, catch her. Yeah, that's so true. He's she saw him like once every three weeks. If that yeah.

Laura 58:18

That fits. That's so true, because I was gonna say I don't think there's an overarching theme or point that I can discuss in relation to her time in Indonesia, but if there were to be one, it would be Liz's to be expected relationship patterns resurface. We know it's coming. I was really having trouble with her lack of growth coupled with the inevitable development of her ending up in a relationship. And there was a glimmer of hope after she's met Felipe, who she does end up in a relationship with. On page 298, she says, I have a history of making decisions very quickly about men. Sorry for everyone on my inconsistencies with the accent. Sometimes it just it calls to me and I feel like I have to do it, but not right now. I have always fallen in love fast and without measuring risks. I have a tendency not only to see the best in everyone, but to assume that everyone is emotionally capable of reaching his highest potential. I have fallen in love more times than I care to count with the highest potential of a man rather than with the man himself, and then I have hung on to the relationship for a long time, sometimes far too long, waiting for the man to ascend to his own greatness. Many times in romance I've been a victim of my own optimism. I married young and quick from a place of love and hope, but without a lot of discussion over what the realities of marriage would mean. Then she said, What I've only recently realized is that I not only have to become my own husband, but I need to be my own father too. And this is why I sent myself to bed that night alone, because I felt it was too soon for me to be receiving a gentleman's suitor. That said, I woke up at 2 a.m. and this is Rita's interpretation, horny as hell. And this is where she decides to dabble in a little bit of masturbation.

Bridget 1:00:04

I think this sort of answered a question for me that I was wondering the whole time because constantly we are hearing about how horny she is. She loves kissing. I love kissing so much. I just want to kiss everybody in the world. I miss kissing. I blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. And I just thought, are you not like are you not gonna masturbate? Is this are you this horny, but you're not gonna do it? Like, if this is such an important thing to just deal with it yourself. Like you don't need to have this man involved. And so when we finally got there, I was like, okay, cool, like that answers that question. But then I sort of found out a bit more than I wanted to know, and so she's she then goes into detail and she says, for some reason the potatoes hadn't worked. I don't know what the potatoes were meant to do about the situation, but she got herself up, cooked some potatoes, they didn't work. Question mark. So I had my way with myself yet again. As usual, my mind paged through its backlog of erotic files, looking for the right fantasy or memory that would help get the job done fastest. But nothing was really working tonight. Not the firemen, not the pirates, not that pervy old Bill Clinton standby scene that usually does the trick, not even the Victorian gentlemen crowding around me in their drawing room with their task force of nubile young maids. In the end, the only thing that would satisfy was when I reluctantly admitted into my mind the idea of my good friend from Brazil climbing into this bed with me, on me. Then I slept. But I didn't want to know about that.

Laura 1:01:29

No, I fear I've read Too too many books that have been horny for Bill Clinton. Too more than I ever expected to.

Bridget 1:01:37

And I'm not saying she shouldn't have been masturbating. Pop off Queen, if that's your deal, whatever.

Laura 1:01:42

Also, whatever floats your boat, we've read so much worse.

Bridget 1:01:45

Oh yeah, like literally this week I've read so much worse. But at the same time, is this the book for that? But it is so funny because she's like so proud of herself for abstaining from sleeping with whatever his name is. And then the very next day, what does she do? Sleeps with him.

Laura 1:02:01

Yep. It says, I was so glad I made the decision to stay alone. Next chapter. So I was kind of surprised when the next night, after he'd made me dinner at his house and after we'd sprawled on his couch for several hours and discussed all manner of subjects, and after he'd unexpectedly leaned into me for a moment and sunk his face towards my armpit and pronounced how much he loved the marvellous dirty stink of me, Felipe finally put his palm against my cheek and said, That's enough, my darling. Come to my bed now. And I did.

Bridget 1:02:31

This part made me sick. What do you mean he unexpectedly leaned into me for a moment and sunk his face toward my armpit and pronounced how much he loved the marvellous dirty stink of me? That's gross. And she's been wearing the same clothes for a year at this point, nearly a year.

Laura 1:02:46

It's just a shame because the only crumbs of sexuality we get here are um reasonably off-putting. Yeah. There was one really unusual line of thinking from her that came in the midst of all of her like blah blah, I make bad dating decisions, I have to become my own father, etc. etc. type monologue. Uh, and she says, I have no nostalgia for the patriarchy, please believe me. But what I have come to realize is that when the patriarchic system was rightfully dismantled, it was not necessarily replaced by another form of protection. And that really left me baffled because does she think the patriarchy doesn't exist anymore? She seems to think that. Dusting your hands. Glad we dealt with that. Very strange. That was confusing to me. I couldn't understand if it was a joke or not, because I don't know if that was a popular line of thinking at that point in time. Like, yay, feminists, we did it. But surely not. We'll never know.

Bridget 1:03:40

We'll never know.

Laura 1:03:41

I'm saying so much, but I think another example of her telling a story with the purpose of showing off was another inclusion in their love making. And she says, And mind you, this is one sentence. But now my sturdy flying machine had become obsolete right there in midair. So I stepped out of that single-minded single-engine airplane and let this fluttering white parachute swing me down through the strange, empty atmosphere between my past and my future and land me safely on this small, bed-shaped island inhabited only by this handsome, shipwrecked Brazilian sailor who, having been alone himself for far too long, was so happy and so surprised to see me coming that he suddenly forgot all his English and could only manage to repeat these five words every time he looked at my face. Beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, and beautiful. I I can't imagine this is also probably, you know, a bit of tall poppy syndrome. Maybe it's the patriarchy working against me as well, but I would feel I think I'd have hang-ups being like telling a story even to you that went along the lines of, oh, I met this guy and he just could not stop saying how beautiful I was. He he literally told me five times. Did I tell you how he said how beautiful I was? I don't know. Often I find myself saying stuff where I'm like, I think that's a problem with me. But it is strange.

Bridget 1:05:08

It is strange, and it wasn't actually the only time she said something like that because there was another really, really strange line. This comes just before they've slept together, her and Felipe, and they've spent a day at the beach, and he says something so weird, and I think he says quite a lot of very strange things, strange and questionable things from this point on. But he says he liked my body, he told me after the initial viewing at the beach. He told me that Brazilians have a term for exactly my kind of body. Of course they do. Once again, sexualizing an entire culture. Which is Magra Falsa, translating as fake thin, meaning that the woman looks slender enough from a distance. But when you get up close, you can see that she's actually quite round and fleshy, which Brazilians consider a good thing. God bless Brazilians.

Laura 1:05:56

Yeah, that uh that stuck out to me as well.

Bridget 1:06:00

Very strange.

Laura 1:06:00

So it's kind of like I win both ways.

Bridget 1:06:02

Yeah. I'm thin and I'm thick. I'm for everyone. Da da da da da da. This sort of reminds me of something else. I mean, surprise, surprise, that I had a problem with. And it was her really flippant way of writing about quite atrocious things. And one of them actually came from Felipe. It wasn't surprising to me that she didn't have a problem with it. He says, for some very strange reason, keeping in mind that he's in his fifties and she's in her thirties, for some reason I feel the same way about you that I felt about my kids when they were small. That it wasn't their job to love me. It was my job to love them. A little bit further down the page, he says, Sometimes I wish you were a lost little girl and I could scoop you up and say, Come and live with me now. Let me take care of you forever. But you aren't a lost little girl. You're a woman with a career, with ambition. You are a perfect snail. You carry your home on your back. You should hold on to that freedom for as long as possible. But all I'm saying is this if you want this Brazilian man, you can have him. I'm yours already. And I don't know what about those two comments made her think, I love this man, I'm gonna marry this man. Because he's referring to you as a child.

Laura 1:07:13

Yeah, there's another comment later on when he says something like, You look so young, you look so young in that moment. I I just want to save you or something.

Bridget 1:07:21

Yeah, and I think it like the first time that they have sex, she talks about him taking off her clothes as if he's getting her ready for a bath or something. Very strange. But this passage from Felipe is on page 289, and like once again, red flag, I think run as far away from this man as you can. He says, You should see how it happens in Bali, darling. All these Western men come here after they've made a mess of their lives back home, and they decide they've had it with Western women, and they go marry some tiny, sweet, obedient, little Balinese teenage girl. I know what they're thinking. They think this pretty little girl will make them happy, make their lives easy. But whenever I see it happen, I always want to say the same thing. Good luck. Because you still have a woman in front of you, my friend, and you are still a man. That's an insane thing to say. That the the Western men come over here to marry a tiny, sweet, obedient little Balinese teenage girl. What the hell? Yeah, what the hell? Why is that wh why did you write that down? Why did you think that was appropriate? She has married this man since divorced him, but I wouldn't want anyone knowing my husband said that.

Laura 1:08:34

No, I think what's interesting about so many of these things, and again, it was a different time, it was a different place, but I just keep thinking, hmm, you chose to write that down. You chose to represent that person with that section of dialogue, and it's often quite interesting.

Bridget 1:08:52

I think there's a lot to be said about the colonial aspects of this book. Like, if we have a quick think about when she first arrived in Bali for the second time and said something like she thought originally thought that that Bali was the most peaceful nation in the world and nothing bad had ever happened in Bali, and then she was like, Oh, actually, it has a long and dark colonial history, like everywhere else in the world. Yeah.

Laura 1:09:16

Like, do you think? And then after she learned that, she was like, I'm not so sure that this is the place for me to be finding balance given that so many bad things happen here. Um hopefully it can still deliver what I'm looking for.

Bridget 1:09:30

This part on page 322 was very, very strange. And this is part of her realization that Bali has quite a dark history, filled with colonial violence. This is the closest she comes to being intentionally offensive, I think. And she says, the wise keep in mind that this is, in fact, Indonesia, the largest Islamic nation on earth, unstable at its core, corrupt from the highest ministers of justice all the way down to the guy who pumps gas into your car and who only pretends to fill it all the way up. Some kind of revolution will always be possible here at any moment, and all your assets may be reclaimed by the victors, probably at gunpoint. This is rich coming from the woman who only chapters ago was denouncing George Bush for his war in Iraq. This like this is Islamophobia. Why is Indonesia different to any other country in the world? At any moment, in any country, there could be danger. Just because they're Islamic doesn't make it any different. That's an insane thing to say.

Laura 1:10:31

Yeah, it is an insane thing to say, and it goes against what she said in Mia Pages earlier, where she was like, all faith is the same. Aren't we all really preaching the same thing, referencing the same God? You can cherry pick from whichever you like because they're all the same. Choose what suits you.

Bridget 1:10:46

Yeah, I just think this is so interesting. Like for someone who claims to love Ali so much, it is a very strange observation to write in your book once again.

Laura 1:10:55

Well, even in the India chapter, she did have a random throwaway mention to the Taliban. It said, Be careful, warns this tale, not to get too obsessed with the repetition of religious ritual just for its own sake, especially in this divided word where the Taliban and the Christian coalition continue to fight out their international trademark war over who owns the rights to the word God and who has the proper rituals to reach that God. Quite strange to single out the Taliban. The Taliban isn't even a faith. Like, yeah.

Bridget 1:11:25

I think it would be very easy to say it's not that deep about this book, and it's not about the cultures, and it's not about the religion, it's just about one woman's self-discovery journey. But I think that we can't forget that she is a white woman because she will not shut up about the fact that she is a thin, tall, hot white woman. This line on page 331 was once again staggering. She was invited to attend a blessing of a baby who had reached the age of six months. As she explains it, the Balinese don't let their children touch the ground for the first six months of life, because newborn babies are considered to be gods sent straight from heaven, and you wouldn't let a god crawl around the floor with all the toenail clippings and cigarette butts. So Balinese babies are carried for the first six months, revered as minor deities. So she was invited to the ceremony and she walked in, and everybody is dressed in their finery, like appropriately for a party, uh for a you know a sacred naming. It's like a christening basically. And she says, I was underdressed, sweaty from my bike ride, self-conscious in my broken t-shirt amid all this beauty. But I was welcomed exactly the way you would want to be if you were the white girl who'd wandered in inappropriately attired and uninvited. Everyone smiled at me with warmth and then ignored me and commenced to the part of the party where they all sat around admiring each other's clothes. Like, okay. Cool. Well done. Another time she says, Thank God her skin's fair, because that would help her be a good marriage candidate in India.

Laura 1:12:54

Yes. Wild. Rattles off some unusual facts about the caste system and then is like, but I wouldn't even pretend to understand that. Just an offshoot of that party scene. I was so relieved this came at the very end of the book because I think if I'd read what I read earlier, I would have really, really lost it. And again, this is just really driving home her insistence on making her really useless contributions front and center. She's talking about how there's hours of chanting and people are singing mantras and they're putting out blessings and the babies are going around. And she said, I imagine my own translation of his words. It says, Oh, little baby, this is roast chicken for you to eat. Someday you will love roast chicken and we hope you have lots of it. Oh, little baby, this is a chunk of cooked rice. May you always have all the chunks of cooked rice you could ever desire. May you be showered with rice for always. Oh little baby, this is a coconut. Isn't it funny how this coconut looks? Someday you will eat lots of coconuts. Oh little baby, this is your family. Do you not see how much your family adores you? Oh little baby, you are precious to the whole universe. You are an A plus student. You are our magnificent bunny. You are a yummy hunk of silly putty. Oh little baby, you are the Sultan of Swing. You are our everything. Shut up. Shut up, Elizabeth. Who let this stay in? Who like I need to know who is validating her throughout this process because there's just so much in this that's really, really perplexing.

Bridget 1:14:25

It's so funny because I read that last night and I have no memory of any of that.

Laura 1:14:29

That's I didn't even I thought that I must have listened to it in the audiobook, but I remember it jumped out because I could see oh, oh, oh, oh on the page, and I was like, what the hell is this? Doubled back. What is this? While we're still loosely on the topic of her sort of white woman saviour complex, then we have to talk about Yann. Now, Yann is a healer that she meets while she's in Bali, who has a daughter of her own and two adopted daughters and very little money. She doesn't have a house, so she has no permanent place of residence for herself, her family, and importantly, her business. She has to keep moving around all the time, which means she loses her business, she loses all stability in her life. And Liz, I mean, I do believe that she struck up a friendship with Warne. Firstly, she sounds like a great time, but there's also definitely an element here where she takes her on as sort of a personal project. This all comes together where for her birthday present, Elizabeth Gilbert decides that she's gonna rally all of her friends, start a little GoFundMe. GoFundMe. Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Essentially pioneer GoFundMe and get all of her friends to put some money together so that Weanne can buy a house. They end up raising $18,000, I think, which is obviously a huge sum of money. Once she gives her the money, I feel like it ends up coming with strings attached because she starts to get a little bit shirty about the fact that she hasn't committed to buying a house or a block of land. And even though Liz admits, oh my god, I literally had no idea how much you could buy a house for. I just thought it would be, it was very much giving how much can a banana cost, Michael? Ten dollars. It was really, she was like, I don't know how much houses cost, but she definitely thought she'd have enough to cover it. She's shocked to find that probably Westerners are snapping up all of the land. 100%. And there's like complicated taxes and customs and traditions that go along with acquiring land. When Yann is not rushing into this decision, she's not impressed. And I think this is a bad faith move by her. I think that it's not a good gesture, it's not a genuinely good deed if it comes with conditions.

Bridget 1:16:40

It is also very interesting if we think about the amount of time that she was in Bali for. So she was in Bali for four months. I mean, legally, she was only meant to be there for 30 days, but she went and bribed somebody so she could stay for the whole four months. I'd say the first month she was with Kat every day, and then she fell off her bike, and then she had to go and meet YN to get her knee fixed. They had to sort form some sort of friendship that maybe, you know, a few weeks. Then she would have had to contact all of her friends and get the money together, get that organized. Maybe a few more weeks. We might be up to two, two and a half months by this point. Then she has to give YN the money, thank you so much, and then that only leaves about a month. So she's expecting this woman to find the place where she will stay forever in a month and get it all neatly tied up in a bow for her 12-month year off from her life. It's just about her, once again. It's insane. When I was reading it, I was just getting the impression that Elizabeth is thinking that she is smarter or, you know, more worldly than YN. Because if I was writing a memoir, and I've talked about this before, I would be feeling quite nervous about the way that people would be perceived from my perspective. And I wouldn't want to be putting negativity about somebody who doesn't have a chance to defend themselves. And I don't understand why you would write this about somebody who can read it for themselves. Is it that she can't read English? Is it that she has spoken to her and like cleared it with her and it's all fine, or has she just written it and like hoped for the best? Because if that was me reading about the sort of deceitfulness that happened towards the end of that, because she had to pretend to her that her friends were hounding her for proof of purchase and she said that they think you are a bullshit, I would be feeling quite devastated if I were YN.

Laura 1:18:36

Yeah, I think I would too. And it I just think it's kind of bullshit because she's gone on this journey of alleged self-discovery, but I don't think she's able to be honest with herself that it was her own ego that was on the line there. She had a plan and it didn't work out. And she can't say, Hey, I need you to buy the house because I'm embarrassed that I asked all of my friends to do this thing, and it seems like you're not gonna do it in the timeline I assigned. So you need to do it, otherwise, I'm gonna have a hang-up about it.

Bridget 1:19:04

And a major plot for my book isn't gonna work out very well. It's not gonna make me sound very good.

Laura 1:19:09

She has some pretty crazy thinking around this as well. Eventually it seems that Wey Ann starts sort of stringing her along on a bit of a story, asking for more money, um, asking for more time, whatever it may be. There's new conditions every day. The farmer won't sell her the land because his wife wants this. He wants her to buy all of the land, not just a portion of it, blah blah blah. And Richard from Texas pops up again to say, she's fucking with you, groceries. And so she goes to Felipe point blank, asking for his opinion. Is she fucking with me? He has not ever commented upon my business with Weanne, not once. Darling, he says kindly, of course she's fucking with you. But not intentionally. You need to understand the thinking in Bali. It's the way of life here for people to try to get the most money they can out of visitors. It's how everyone survives, so she's making up some stories about the farmer. Darling, since when does a Balinese man need to talk to his wife before he can make a business deal? Listen, the guy is desperate to sell her a small parcel. He already said he would, but she wants the whole thing now, and she wants you to buy it for her. Now Liz thinks I cringe at this for two reasons. First of all, I hate to think that this could be true of We Anne. Second, I hate the cultural implications under his speech, the whiff of colonial white man's burden stuff, the patronizing this is what, all of these people are like argument. But Felipe isn't a colonialist. He's Brazilian. And I think the hypocrisy of that is quite breathtaking because what has she done this whole book, if not paint with all people alike this brush strokes?

Bridget 1:20:50

For every country she visited. Every single one, every single person, the Swedish person, the Italian people, the Indian people, and now the Indonesian people, and Brazilian as well.

Laura 1:21:03

And Brazilian. I think we might be at the point of the episode where we just start rattling off stuff that came to us. Do you have anything in your mind?

Bridget 1:21:11

There was something quite funny that I read in the preface of the book, once again. Seems to be my favourite part of the book today. She's talking about the reactions from the broader community that she received after the book was published. And she says the strangest letter I ever received was from a woman who began her correspondence. Listen, bitch. This unusual salutation probably should have been a warning for me not to read any further. But I did. She went on to say, Don't you think I hate my marriage too, bitch? Don't you think I'm miserable, bitch? Don't you think I wish I'd made different choices in my life? Don't you think I would love to get a divorce and go and find myself in the world? But I don't, bitch. I stick with it, bitch. Because this is what marriage means. Bitch. It means honoring a commitment. Bitch.

Laura 1:22:04

Honestly, I'd be tough to get that letter. Reading that at like 11 o'clock last night, being like, oh.

Bridget 1:22:13

How about you? Do you have anything that you would like to leave a last little lasting memory of?

Laura 1:22:19

Yeah, that actually reminded me of something that I came across when I was looking through the Goodreads reviews. And this was actually in the questions and answers section. And I think Did I write this? Someone named Mary has said, How did this book get on my currently reading list? I have never had the slightest interest in it and never will. If someone or someone is manipulating my reading list, I want to know that. This is particularly so where Goodreads and Amazon want to be besties, joining together in the great data algorithmics of life. Do not eat pray love. Respect privacy, autonomy, boundaries. Make it stop. A little later, Mary replied to her own question, saying, No one ever responded to me. I do not want this junk in my reading list. Goodreads sent me an answer that was not an answer, but an invitation that seems psychotic and or a solicitation. Goodreads does not appear to have a process to address this, although it should. What? Pop off queen. Privacy, autonomy, and boundaries is my new motto.

Bridget 1:23:31

We finished eating, praying, and laughing. Now it's time to talk about our favourite and least favourite characters. Laura, who was your favourite character in this book? Mmm.

Laura 1:23:42

That's kind of tricky because unfortunately for friends of Elizabeth Gilbert, she didn't really paint a flattering picture of many of them. I think probably Yann was my most favourite character, despite the fact, and I know we haven't spoken about this, but despite the fact that she had quite a lengthy discussion about a man shooting water out of his banana. And I'm sure you can you can imagine what that is. We won't go into it. No. How about you? Possibly Yann's daughter. Yeah. Because she was cute, precocious but not annoying.

Bridget 1:24:18

Like to draw pictures. And I'm I'm into that.

Laura 1:24:20

Yeah, I hope she's doing well.

Bridget 1:24:22

Yeah. How about your least favourite character? Who is your least favourite character in Eat Prey Love?

Laura 1:24:27

My least favourite character upon some reflection could potentially be Felipe. I thought it was alright, but over the course of this episode, he said some weird shit.

Bridget 1:24:36

He really did. And like it seemed to be saying weird shit and having no fallout from that.

Laura 1:24:42

Yeah, like only weird shit.

Bridget 1:24:44

Yeah.

Laura 1:24:44

This is his comeuppance. Yeah.

Bridget 1:24:46

How about you? My least favourite character is Richard from Texas. I hate it. I don't like that. I don't like the nickname groceries. I don't like how he is so wise and all-knowing. It seems like a douchebag. He seems made up. Oh yeah, I mean, he seems made up. A made-up douchebag.

Laura 1:25:06

And then the inevitable question. The pinnacle of every episode. Do you rate Eat Prey Love by Elizabeth Gilbert?

Bridget 1:25:14

Lit or shit? Oh, it's so shit. I mean, imagine if I said lit after we just spent the whole episode being like, what?

Laura 1:25:20

Why would you write that? What? What?

Bridget 1:25:25

I don't really feel like we've had much intelligent stuff to say this episode. Sorry. Sorry, the source material sometimes just just does not allow you to have anything good to say.

Laura 1:25:34

And actually, I should say, if you've made it to the end of this episode and kind of have a feeling of like, that's not as peppy as their usual ones, please know that we recorded credence before we recorded this. So you should firstly go and listen to that. Yeah. And secondly, forgive us. Yes, please.

Bridget 1:25:52

I also rate it shit, by the way.

Laura 1:25:54

Yeah.

Bridget 1:25:55

It's time for us to eat, pray, love, and leave you. Have your say in what we read next by keeping an eye on the link in our show notes and on our socials. Make sure you subscribe to the show, and if you want to be on the same page as us, follow us at talklit.gethit on Instagram and TikTok.