Eat. Pray. DIE OF BOREDOM.

This post was originally going to be the first on a new blog dedicated to book reviews - however, a beautiful combination of laziness (opening a new page, typing in the anti-spam word, etc... just seems like far too much effort) and my lack of confidence in providing an objective review of this particular work, has me abusing my regular blog. In all honesty, I just need to be able to be a bit of a ranty twat with this one. Because I really do believe it is AWFUL, despite the endorsement by Hollywood and Julia Roberts.

For anyone not in the loop yet, I'm referring to Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert.

We begin by meeting Ms Gilbert on the bathroom floor, praying for insight from a god she's not sure she believes in. The problem is marital - she's not sure she wants to be with her husband anymore, and rather than join the waves of people cluttering up the divorce courts, she decided instead to bore everyone else to death with several hundred horrendous pages of soul-searching wankery. I would rather she had spent the time and effort writing 'Toilet duck, Loo Roll, Bathroom Tiles' - the - I'm positive - superior alternative to Eat, Pray,Love detailing her surroundings during that first desperate conversation with God. I'd read it twice just to erase the latter from memory.

I feel genuinely cheated by this Gilbert woman. From the synopsis, this is the kind of book that ordinarily I'd be buying multiples of and lending them to friends. Travel writing, religious exploration and indulgence - that is exactly my kind of reading. But instead I found a patronising list of philosophical ideals, an adventure without any adventure and a protagonist who simply seems to be trying to reassure herself that her decision to leave her husband was prompted by some higher power or fate itself. I couldn't give a crap why she actually left her husband - does she realise how many marriages end every day? But, come on love -at least be honest with yourself. You were bored. Your husband's irritating habits suddenly became reasons to beat him to death with the coffee table and you had simply had enough.

The idea of her story, I love. Rather than stay in a life she was unhappy with, Gilbert decided to break free and travel in search of something different. She wanted to be spiritually happy, physically happy and wholly content. None of this is unreasonable. She chooses Italy, India and Indonesia, spending a few months in each with the intention of exploring different sides of her personality in these locations. But whether surrounded by food, wine and culture in Rome, or chanting with the spiritual masses in India, she remains whiny, irritating and hard-done-by. She is the literary equivalent to someone taking Prozac in front of guests at a dinner party: rather than proactively treating her problem, you really just get the feeling she wants you to ask her why she's taking it. Any excuse to wax and wane about the injustices and hiccups of her life. Don't worry - you don't have to ask her - she's written it all down in mind-numbing detail.

I don't think I'd have reacted with so much disgust, had her writing not been so appallingly superior and condescending. She talks about her decision to break free of conformity - not get married, not have children, etc... as being the edgier, riskier choice. It's definitely a choice, but that's where it ends. You're simply choosing to keep your life your own in that instance - to be responsible for yourself and do what you want to when you want to. Yes, that's a choice - one that women surrounded by children and complacent partners might even envy you for once in a while - but it's not edgy and it's not risky. Gilbert travelled by plane, not pirate-ship. She rented apartments and ate in restaurants and presumably brushed her teeth every morning. Risky? Get over yourself, Liz. Seriously.

The chapters in which religion is explored, simply smack of someone who wants to show off knowledge. Her own spiritual journey remains largely unknown and what there is of it, sounds trite and - to be honest - made-up. She's so busy being poetic and meaningful, she's left out her own story. She is a runaway narrator - veering entirely off-track and simply trying to fill pages with as much pretentious diatribe as physically possible.

All in all, the most impressive passages in Eat, Pray, Love are about the food. Next time a synopsis like that tries to fool me, I'll be saving myself the bother and buying a Jamie Oliver book instead.

Behind Enemy Lines

Books have been an integral part of my domestic landscape for as long  as I can remember. Bookshelves proudly bearing everything from ratty old paperbacks to pristine hardbacks line every available wall I can get away with before, inevitably, whoever I'm living with declares me financially and spacially irresponsible and bans me from entering Waterstones.

My earliest memory of a book is not a particularly dignified one. My grandmother perched on the side of the bed my sister and I were sharing in her spare room, trying desperately to read us tales from One Hundred-Acre Wood before we went to sleep. Exasperated, she eventually gave up when we fell about laughing every time she uttered the word 'Pooh'.


Peter Rabbit



I am pleased to report that my reading material, along with my sense of humour matured and very soon, I was glued to Beatrix Potter and devouring Enid Blyton (The Wishing Chair and The Far-Away Tree, my absolute favourites). I adore(d) Dahl and eventually developed the typical teenage fascination with vampires. My tastes remained fairly eclectic though - favouring mixed genres and swinging between Charlotte Bronte and Stephen King by the age of thirteen. Every now and again, I would find a book that was to become part of my affair with literature for life. Flowers in the Attic by Virginia Andrews and it's following series was one of these stories. I've now lost count of the amount of times I have read them. Always the same tired paperbacks, lined and brittle with flaking covers. They are the true veterans of my book case. Every time I look at them, I want to read them again.

My passion for books has never wavered. Even my desk at Oxford University Press is cluttered with advance copies I am fairly certain I will never get round to reading - but I love to look at them anyway. My environment is that much more comforting with them than without.

 

The Folk of the Faraway Tree

So it will come as no surprise, that when e-readers began to surface on the market a couple of years ago, I jumped on my high-horse faster than Clint Eastwood had ever managed. I ranted and raved - pointed fingers, picked up my scythe and in the very best damning voice I could muster, declared them the work of Satan and his minions. Reading screens instead of books? Pressing buttons instead of turning pages? NO. They were the very essence of technology over-stepping it's boundaries and going too far. Where would we be next if we allowed e-readers to declare the book redundant? I was plagued with visions of children with giant headsets sitting idly in chairs - their brains playing hopskotch or '123 in' while their legs twitched in tired protest of the neglect. I was certain. E-readers marked the end of everything decent, pure and traditional.

I may have overreacted. Slightly.

Just after Christmas 2010, I got the beginnings of gadget envy. I recognized it in myself and tried to quell the temptation - reminding myself of all of those sound, revelation-style arguments I had been so vehement about. Still, I couldn't quite get rid of it and began to see the potential of a device such as Amazon's 'Kindle'. I could store 5000 books on the comparitively tiny piece of equipment and save my precious bookshelves for beautiful editions of the novels I trully cherished. I could purchase with one click and be reading mere seconds later. The lure was almost overwhelming.

Scrap the 'almost'. I lasted two months and last week was in receipt of a shiny new Kindle. My husband has threatened to disown me. He's holding fast to the scripture of doom I was guilty of spouting myself just weeks ago. I am a heathen and a traitor and he eyes my Kindle with shrewd, mistrusting eyes. I've not once felt secure enough to leave them in a room together unsupervised yet.

Suddenly, this new medium has refreshed my love of reading and the TV glares at me, betrayed, whenever I have a spare ten minutes to myself. I am converted - I love the e-reader.

Look at me - I'm evolving.