As many of you know, Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert was and continues to be an inspiring tale for me. I went to Rome shortly after reading it the first time, and a second reading helped put into words my spiritual ideologies. I haven't felt the need for a third reading, but I'm open to it.
Before doing that, I had to read her latest work, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace With Marriage. From what I'd heard, it wasn't quite the same caliber as EPL, but I personally found it engaging and smart, if not honest and unassuming. Gilbert writes of what she knows: intimacy, loving another person, having a healthy fear of marriage. She doesn't set out to top EPL, and I found the two books to be very different, albeit complementary, works of creative nonfiction.
Here's my one critique (and it's really more of a wonder): why is the book titled Committed if there's no commentary on the connotations of that word? Commitment implies confinement. Why do we commit ourselves to people, but also to mental health clinics? Is it because we must be (for lack of a more PC word) a little crazy to commit? Or is it because (in the safety of a healthy relationship) we feel a little saner once we've done so?
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