To think Elizabeth Gilbert massively manipulated public perception with Eat, Pray, Love?

I think she likes she likes the narrative of herself better than the experience of being herself. And that's fairly common, so a neatly parcelled book presenting self creation through narrative as triumph found an audience.

I wonder though if she's misjudged how far the method can be stretched? Not sure it can accommodate the really quite grotesque and unedifying behaviour in the new book where everyone is that bit older, thought processes less elastic, capacity for transcendence dulled by years of excess, and they aren't so much glorious damned and beautiful, nothing aspirational.

Weirdest thing is, I swear I've read a version of it on Mumsnet.

I barely got a few chapters into the book because I found it really smug: it was basically a 2010s reboot of what the privileged hippy kids did in the 60s. Admittedly I was in a very cynical frame of mind when I read it but I doubt I would feel more charitable today.

To be honest it just seems really blindingly obvious: if things have gone really badly for you a reset and a rest in a different setting is good. Rebranded for the angsty 2010s but its a story as old as the hills.

Also as a PP said its nauseatingly privileged: we'd all love to take 12 months off to take our feet off the pedal and "find" ourselves but who can actually do it?

But maybe I'm being overly cynical...

I enjoyed reading Eat Pray Love much more than I thought I would. I do share your cynicism though about how authentic or otherwise it all was in light of her recent book. I read an excerpt of it in a newspaper and she sounded absolutely unhinged and deeply disturbed. Yet again, she's touting it as a brave and admirable story of survival. I find her very strange

I never read the book, or had any interest in seeing the film either, so I can't really comment on any of that. Maybe it was appealing to a particular demographic? Lots of lost people, looking for some form of escapism, I suppose.

I always found her massively annoying and fake so the fact she's reinvented herself so often isn't a great surprise. YANBU.

Surely it was obvious to everyone from the start that she was a complete grifter?