Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with 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?

Embarking on writing a major work after the spectacular Eat, Pray, Love, must have been no easy feat. However, undaunted and honest as ever, Elizabeth Gilbert provides an eye-opening and thorough account of the colossal entity we call marriage. We have all grown up accepting marriage as a given. It seems to be taken as common place that people simply grow up and get married- and then (of course) live happily ever after. Or is it that easy?

Not so fast, Gilbert warns us. Do we completely know what we are getting into? What happens to us as independent beings when we marry? What makes a marriage more likely to succeed, and what makes it more likely to fail? What are the economic, social, and legal ties that bind us and do we even understand the significance of them? How are we able to somehow throw love in the mix as well? Extremely timely and pertinent questions with serious implications. Some of the most interesting and thought provoking aspects of the book- a glimpse into the lives of the Hmong women in Asia (who view marriage not as a solution to all of life's problems and seem to have no qualms whatsoever about this), how marriage was viewed by different religions throughout the centuries- not always so 'sacred', and the way marriage has been used to secure money, power, and property throughout history. Quite simply, Gilbert explains this institution has been pulled, prodded, and changed for centuries- yet still it remains. There is something, then that draws us still to marry. Gilbert (thrown rather harshy into marriage by the US government) walks away with a brokered peace with marriage and a deeper understanding of what it means to be married- as she embarks on her own marriage. The reader has a deeper understanding as well.

As a final note, what is more important if not the subject of who we spend our lives with? Who we share our faith, time, children, money, and precious moments with? As a new mother who married five years ago at the age of 24 (I know this puts me into the danger zone :), this book has given me fuller understanding of what it means to be married and coming to respect my own marriage as an imperfect, changing, and totally lovable creature- much like my own baby son. (Quite simply, the white gown and endless talks about the church and reception hall didn't really matter- the chats we had about faith, child-rearing, navigating our political differences, and in-laws definitely mattered.) It has once been said that 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' Gilbert's book suggests that perhaps an unexamined marriage is not worth having- and I'd agree.

I'm a big fan of Elizabeth Gilbert and loved Eat, Pray, Love as well as her talk on creativity at the TED conference circulating on YouTube. Her blend of factual information, anecdote and creative interpretation is illuminating and entertaining. And Committed has its share of humor and aha! moments.

In her preface to Committed, Gilbert says she originally wrote a 500-page version of this book, then discarded it. She implies it was too pedantic, so the second time she wrote it imagining only an audience of close women friends. I believe this gives the book a talky, chatty quality that does not translate well to the written page. There are too many "anyways", redundancies and extraneous phrases. If she were speaking this text to us, we could experience her gestures and facial expressions, inflection and dramatic pauses; the audiovisuals of conversation would keep us interested. But on the two-dimensional page, I found myself growing impatient and wishing she had thinned the verbiage by 30 per cent.

I also felt uncomfortable with the amount of very personal information she revealed about her husband and her parents. A confessional approach to one's own life by a memoirist is one thing; to expose and discuss other peoples' intimate feelings and issues seems exploitative.

Another problem was the lack of sourcing for her valuable factual data, particularly, her fascinating material on the evolution of marriage. This information could be very useful to call out the "ancient tradition" excuse for social repression. But without sources, it's much less useful. She did list about 20 authors in one sentence in her acknowledgements but this doesn't help much. Gilbert has one explanatory footnote in her book and says with seeming pride that it is "the only footnote in the book". Again, I think she went overboard on veering away from pedantry.

The idea for this book and much of its information is interesting and valuable. I wish Gilbert had imagined a wider, less personally familiar audience so that her writing might have been more pithy and vivid. I believe this book packed a punch but it became buried and invisible in the rambling, chatty delivery.

"Committed" is a natural sequel to EPL. Elizabeth Gilbert's EPL is her path to recovery from divorce.

Most folks who have been divorced are highly reluctant to trot down the aisle again. . .will we be more successful this time?

Gilbert and "Felipe" were broke and broken at the end of their first marriages. They were gun-shy until the INS got out the shotgun.

The book is equal part examination of how the US government can create havoc in people's most intimate relationships as it is an examination of what it takes to have an enduring marriage and to experience unconditional love and true intimacy.

If you are looking for a starry-eyed romantic look at love, this isn't the book for you.

But, if you are serious about creating an enduring, mature, loving, intimate relationship, this book will give you much to ponder and discuss with the love of your life. It would be an excellent gift for any engaged couple.

Like so many others, I was curious to know what happened to Elizabeth and her Brazilian lover Felipe after Eat, Pray, Love ended. As the book opens they are still happily together, but with no intention of marrying. It becomes clear however that they will not be able to live together in the US unless they are married. (Or as Elizabeth puts it, they are "sentenced to marry by the Homeland Security Department").

This book is about how they spend most of the next year traveling in Asia waiting for Felipe's visa to process and for much of this time that Elizabeth researches the concept of marriage. So the book is part love story, part travelogue and part history. Or again as Elizabeth puts it, a memoir (with extra socio-historical bonus sections!) about her efforts to make peace with the institution of marriage.

The results are patchy. The historical/sociological parts are well written and interesting enough, but after a while it feels too much like a lecture. (Especially when Elizabeth puts her case for same sex marriages. I have no issue with her views, but neither am I very interested in them). It's when she's describing her own experiences that Gilbert's writing really shines. There are wonderful accounts of encounters with the local people in Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam and I was also totally absorbed in her relationship with Felipe which she describes in a very honest and moving way. While she still has the same chatty and open writing style (which is very easy to read), she comes across as more mature and less self-absorbed this time around.

I'm not sure this book will stay with me in the way that Eat, Pray, Love did, but it was a satisfying read that did also make me think more about my own views on marriage.