"The first chapter of Elizabeth Gilbert's much anticipated new memoir closes on a four-page love letter to Gilbert from her late partner Rayya, who, dead for five years, comes to her in a visitation. In Rayya's voice, Gilbert calls herself babe, baby, or sunshine baby multiple times, emotes in all-caps, and grants herself permission to write the details of Rayya's terrible, humiliating final year."
"Let me just look at you for a minute, Rayya says to Liz. Look at your little rainbow eyes! Look at your sparkling tears! You're so beautiful! The letter is deeply self-indulgent and excruciating to read."
"You're going all the fucking way this time all the way to the enlightenment. I believe that the dead are gone and that artists don't need their permission to evoke them. But I was stunned that this solipsistic mess opens the book, because Gilbert is a terrific storyteller Eat Pray Love, her memoir of self-acceptance and healing, was read by millions."
A four-page visitation letter from a deceased partner uses intimate pet names and all-caps emotion while claiming permission to reveal humiliating final-year details. The voice lavishes praise on the living with exuberant exclamations and grants license to narrate the partner's decline. The letter reads as deeply self-indulgent and solipsistic, creating shock given the narrator's reputation for strong storytelling and a widely read previous work. The narrator repeatedly invokes prior success and attempts to recapture earlier patterns of love, solitude, spiritual practice, and creativity. The account strains to make the partner's relapse and end-of-life choices serve the narrator's personal arc.
Read at www.theguardian.com
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