19 of 22 members found this review helpful.
“I am largely disappointed with this book, especially given all the hype surrounding it. The self talk that is detailed ad noseum throughout the first half of the book is truly painful. And her redefinition of religion to be simply whatever makes one happy is flippantly dismissive of 5000+ years of contemplative religious scholarship and reflection, which seems shallow and a bit arrogant. Not to mention her having no problem meditating on herself despite being in a country where some of the most oppressed women in the world live a life of abject suffering every day. I cant help but feel like her spiritual choices were nothing more than a response to years under the microcope of over-achievement and self un-awareness in America. Once she got to Bali, and met the Balinese divorcee, I was waiting for that jail-cell moment in Bridget Jones II, where after hearing her new friend’s truly horrendous story of spousal beatings and degridation she would realize that perhaps her relationships had'nt been that bad after all. But it never happened.
I did love her descriptions of the places she visited, though. The soccer match in Italy, the garden at dusk in India, and her hilarious road trip in Bali. I love poor Yudhi. And the description of the cottage she rented in Bali made me salivate with envy. And of course, so did the trysts with the Latin Lover.
Not until the end of the book did I begin to appreciate what she may or may not have been trying to say. In her grief and desperation she befriended people all over the world, even taking seriously the medicine man in Bali whose contradictory ideas of reality exposed his lonliness and senility. She took the time. And that human interaction, reaching out to all those random people, caring about their story and their lives, was healing to her and to them. And thats what I love.
But it was a whole lot of drama and eye rolling getting there.”
