Karlee Avery
In “Eat, Pray, Love,” author Elizabeth Gilbert writes about traveling the world on a year-long journey of self-inquiry. She travels to Italy, India and Indonesia to pursue happiness, devotion and the balance of the two.

The book begins by revealing Gilbert’s collapsing marriage, which ultimately ends in divorce. During her divorce, she spends most of her nights crying on her bathroom floor. Since she is depressed, she doesn’t eat a lot, therefore, she loses a significant amount of weight.

After the divorce is finalized, Gilbert moves to Italy a few weeks later. Once in Italy, she eats a lot of food to help her pursue pleasure. She gains 23 pounds, 15 of which are necessary to get her back to a healthy weight.

She lives in Italy for four months before traveling to India to pursue devotion. While there she stays in an Ashram, a place of worship for Hindus and Buddhists. Gilbert plans to stay in the Ashram for only six weeks, but ends up staying there four months.

In India, Gilbert learns the main focus of worship is meditation, through which people can converse with a higher power. After freeing her heart of all its heaviness that’s built up over the years of her divorce and other failed relationships, she leaves India for Indonesia to find the balance of pleasure and devotion.

Once in Indonesia she finds the medicine man she had met two years prior to this current trip. During her previous visit, the medicine man predicted everything that happened to Gilbert in the past two years. When she visits the medicine man a second time, it takes a few minutes for him to remember her, but when he does, he can’t believe she’s the same person. She’s gone from being depressed and thin to content with her life and fuller in the face.

I would recommend “Eat, Pray, Love” to anyone, especially teenagers, since it invites the reader on the exciting journey of one woman’s pursuit of pleasure, devotion and the balance of the two.