This is a first. I read a book last week and was disappointed in it – that’s not a first, but my naming it here will be. The reason I’m going to name the book is that I think there’s a market trend revealed by this book. It’s a trend that mystifies me a bit, so maybe you all have some thoughts that will illuminate it better.
The book in question is Elizabeth Gilbert’s EAT, PRAY, LOVE. The book is doing really well, so it’s obviously striking a chord with a lot of readers. And there are many elements of it that are charming, entertaining, enlightening. My disappointment is simply that the book isn’t about what it’s billed as being about.
EPL is non-fiction, a kind of memoir of one woman’s decision to leave her marriage at 30 because she isn’t happy and the year that she takes to travel around the world and heal. Eating in Italy, praying in India, loving in Bali – four months in each place.
The book’s been out for a while, but I had no interest in reading it — because I lived that story, thanks very much. I left my marriage at 30 because I wasn’t happy, although there were no problems evident to the outside world, and the subsequent few years were extraordinarily difficult. No international travel for me and no book deal for a memoir, because I didn’t (and don’t) think that part of my personal journey are anyone else’s business. So, it must be said that I approached this book – which I read on my editor’s recommendation – with a certain expectation that the author was self-indulgent and maybe self-absorbed.
And indeed, that was my impression in the first fifty pages. She doesn’t talk much about her failed marriage, but notes that they had decided together to start a family when she turned 30 and when she turned 30, she didn’t want to do that anymore. Lots of marriages break up over differences in opinion about children, so that’s not that unusual. I wondered whether she found the possibility of losing herself in children, of someone else having centre stage and the spotlight, to be the most terrifying part of the idea.
So, I was expecting a character arc in the book in which she learned a lot about herself, learned a little humility and selflessness, in order to go forward and be happy. There’s a balance to strike there, whether there are children involved or not. But no, by the end of the book, she talks a different game but her actions are exactly the same – the difference is that she’s found a man who prefers to let her lead. Perfect happiness is achieved with zero change.
I was really disappointed by this, and by the tone of the last third of the book in general. This got me to thinking about the root of the book’s popularity and that made me remember another book that mystified me with its popularity. Alice Seybold’s THE LOVELY BONES rode the bestseller charts literally for years but I didn’t get it. The characters seemed passive to me, and although things worked out for most of them in the end, it seemed as if they just got lucky. This defied everything I understood about the importance of active protagonists in fiction. The only active protagonist was the dead girl – who was in heaven even though there is no whiff of religion or spirituality in the book or even a mention of God. Was she an angel? Or just dead and interested? This dead girl watched over her family and friends, and ultimately exacted vengeance for her own death. The live people drifted. I didn’t get this at all.
Then I read a comment in the Globe and Mail Books section by someone (it might have been the perceptive Martin Levin) who said TLB was about reassurance, that the book’s message was that it didn’t matter if you believed in God or practiced religion – if you were a good person, you’d go to heaven anyway. (All good dogs go to heaven kind of thing.) That it didn’t matter if the police and justice system worked on earth – the dead in heaven would ensure that justice was done. That it didn’t matter if you were passive, because the important things would be taken care of by active dead people in heaven. He also – if I remember correctly – drew a link between the timing of the book’s release and the tragedy of September 11, essentially saying that the book addressed a need for reassurance in very trying times and that it’s “everything will be okay, regardless of what you do” message was the reason for its popularity. That made sense to me. There was a lot of fear in the air, a lot of big problems that seemed insurmountable.
So, I’m wondering whether EPL is striking the same chord, that of reassurance – that it’s okay to want whatever you want as a woman; that it’s okay to make choices about your life; that it’s okay for you to decide what happens in your own body. Regardless of what everyone else in society believes or expects, it’s up to you and when you act upon your choices, everything will come out just fine.
The problem is that I don’t think that such blithe reassurance is deserved. You can do whatever you want, of course, but divorce is not that easy of a journey and it’s not a journey that everyone would want to undertake — especially if they understood when making the choice just how ugly the road ahead might get. The pain of divorce is guaranteed but any gain is not – many people make the decision to divorce and are so devastated by the fall-out that they don’t have a transformation of any kind. Many marry exactly the same kind of person or themselves are the same kind of partner, and they repeat the cycle all over again.
I believe that people should follow their hearts, but I don’t believe that you can instigate drastic change, then sit back and wait for miracles. You have to do a lot of your own groundwork to welcome good things into your life. Passivity doesn’t work.
I wish I had liked EPL more, I wish it had shown more of an emotional journey, and I wish that it had made the challenge of making an unpopular choice and its repercussions more clear. I wanted her to be as charming and funny as at the beginning of the book, but more interested in compromise or in fulfilling the desires of the other people in her life. I wanted her to undergo a transformation and get the prezzies at the end as a result. “I’m a better partner because of what I learned about myself/relationships/compromise and trust” is a much more compelling message to me than “I finally met a man who adores me just as I am.”
But like I said, I come with my own experience in hand and that colours my view. Did you read either book? What were your impressions, expectations and conclusions? Do you read for reassurance? Or do you read to witness transformation, maybe to live vicariously by sharing the protagonist’s journey? Are your expectations different for fiction and non-fiction? Mine aren’t and maybe that’s weird. Tell me what you think.
Tomorrow I’ll tell you about the book I’m reading that I really really like.
