Committed
Posted on January 16th, 2010
From Buy Cheap Book Online > Health, Mind & Body > Relationships
Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
At the end of her bestselling memoir Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert fell in love with Felipe, a Brazilian-born man of Australian citizenship who’d been living in Indonesia when they met. Resettling in America, the couple swore eternal fidelity to each other, but also swore to never, ever, under any circumstances get legally married. (Both were survivors of previous horrific divorces. Enough said.) But providence intervened one day in the form of the United States government, which—after unexpectedly detaining Felipe at an American border crossing—gave the couple a choice: they could either get married, or Felipe would never be allowed to enter the country again. Having been effectively sentenced to wed, Gilbert tackled her fears of marriage by delving into this topic completely, trying with all her might to discover through historical research, interviews, and much personal reflection what this stubbornly enduring old institution actually is. Told with Gilbert’s trademark wit, intelligence and compassion, Committed attempts to “turn on all the lights” when it comes to matrimony, frankly examining questions of compatibility, infatuation, fidelity, family tradition, social expectations, divorce risks and humbling responsibilities. Gilbert’s memoir is ultimately a clear-eyed celebration of love with all the complexity and consequence that real love, in the real world, actually entails.
Customer Reviews
Intimacy through… marriage?
I adore Eat, Pray, Love for a variety of reasons. This book however, is not Eat, Pray, Love. Thankfully, it doesn’t pretend to be. My advice: don’t read “Committed” if you are hoping to lose yourself in a compelling story, because you might get bored. Read it if you are interested in learning about marriage – what it is and what it is not, why it sometimes works and why it sometimes doesn’t – and are prepared to examine your own assumptions about this beautiful yet fraught concept.
Some readers may not consider this work an adequate sequel to EPL for stylistic reasons – the storyline is simpler, the tone more somber, and the laughs rarer. But I’m not one of them. For me (and I can only speak for myself), EPL was a pleasure to read because it helped me learn more about myself and my relationship to relationships, which is precisely what “Committed” succeeds at doing. What could be more useful than a book that celebrates not only marriage, but the self inquiry and interpersonal work required to sustain one? For that matter, what could be more romantic?
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Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
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Tags: American Border, Australian Citizenship, Border Crossing, Compassion, Divorces, Elizabeth Gilbert, Family Tradition, Fidelity, Health Mind, Infatuation, Intimacy, Love In The Real World, Matrimony, Memoir, Personal Reflection, Research Interviews, Skeptic, Social Expectations, Trademark Wit, United States Government
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