Many memoirs, and especially memoirs of personal growth and spiritual awakening, are cloying or saccharine. Elizabeth Gilbert’s is neither. An accomplished journalist (she has been nominated three times for a National Magazine Award) and writer of fiction, Gilbert comes across in this book as smart, funny, honest, and engaging—in short, as an excellent companion. No wonder Jennifer Egan, writing in The New York Times, declared, “If a more likable writer than Gilbert is currently in print, I haven’t found him or her.” Eat, Pray, Love tells how Gilbert, reeling and broken in the aftermath of a protracted divorce and a devastating love affair, sought self-understanding and renewal in a year’s journey through three disparate cultures: In Italy, she learns Italian and revels in fine food; in India, she meditates in an ashram; and in Bali, she reconnects with a healer she had met years before—or, as Gilbert describes the motivations for her trip, “I wanted to explore the art of pleasure in Italy, the art of devotion in India and, in Indonesia, the art of balancing the two.”