Elizabeth Gilbert's new book on marriage, COMMITTED will probably not be read by many women over 50 and mostly enjoyed by women under 30. Gilbert challenges too many traditions for older women and the young generation simple takes many of the changes in marriage for granted. Against all the odds of success, she explains in this book, why she is taking the chance and getting married again.
Never could I think of a more difficult subject to write about than that dance, I call marriage, having taken vows of marriage three times I have firm ideas about what can make and break relationships. I think she succeeded with this book but even Gilbert said she totally started over on this project after finishing the first go around.
Gilbert is at her best when she writes like an interviewing journalist. She is very good at observing, very curious and has lots of insights to add. It also should be added that she is not afraid to treat the subject like a research paper and educated herself on the whole field of marriage historically. She became a little boring when examining her own motives and personality, although she is painfully honest and blunt. By nature, memoirs and autobiography matter is narcissistic, I suppose.
Understanding her personality is much easy for me now that she has written so opening about the women in her family. There is a gathering in that bloodline of strong women, independent thinkers and determine hard workers. Personally, I identified easily with her mother, probably a person close to my age.
Humor and openness must a characteristic of her family and husband because she is very revealing, 'eye only' standard was thrown out with printing of this book.
I found my interest level uneven while reading it. In the end, I like her as a writer and am amazed at some of her work but as the NYT reviewer said, I look forward to the book about her grandmother.
I disagree, I think this book is for 30-50 year olds- those people who may have had a marriage fail and are considering a second- sure maybe midwestern housewives are too traditional to buy into her progressive take but it's going to strike the right note with new englanders and west coasters. I think her fan base from Eat Love Pray is more the 30 and above generation and Committed is a book about marriage that 20 somethings have no reason to read, we are marrying because traditionally thats when you do and we're not thinking about it as deeply as she is because we have no reason to- we havent had a chance to fail at it. If we're not marrying its because we no longer see the point, its becoming an unnecessary social construct that seems outdated and disfunctional. The group of 20 something smithies I had tea with yesterday had never heard of her and I read her book only because I'm in a relationship with a foreigner...
ReplyDeleteYou maybe right. My age group-over 65- are not reading her but I assumed it was because of her non-traditional views of marriage and relationships. I did go to a lecture of Gilberts and most of the women were in the 30 t0 50 crowd. Regardless, I like her style of writing. Now I want her to move on and write something other than about herself.
ReplyDeleteugh I know, the one or two people I know (besides you) who have read her- we all same the same thing- she is way too narcissistic- its the whole waspy Connecticutt thing- the contemporary version of a stepford wife- she has it all, her "lover" her career, her family, and a passport full of "life experiences" and although she can be honest about her faults she paints herself as perfectly faulted. As much as you might enjoy her work, you come to find her annoying.
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