“Eat Pray Love,” the bestselling book that inspired millions and hit the big screen last year, is a closed chapter in author Elizabeth Gilbert’s life.
As reported by The Atlantic, Gilbert delivered her final “Eat Pray Love” talk at a Thursday event at the New York Public Library. According to NYPL’s website, Gilbert will now go into quiet retirement where she will work “on slow fiction and even slower gardening.”
Gilbert told audience members on Thursday that her book, which reveals details on her divorce and failed rebound relationship, has “become synonymous with something very poppy and chick lit-y…I’m surprised to be taken seriously.”
“Eat Pray Love,” which was released in 2006, follows Gilbert as she realizes she doesn’t want to be married anymore, admits to her husband that she’s not interested in having kids, and dates a younger man in the separation aftermath. When her new boyfriend doesn’t turn out to be the right guy for her, she takes a yearlong trip to India, Italy and Bali to restore her sanity and love of life.
Gilbert’s book, which remained on the New York Times bestseller list for 185 weeks, was adapted into a film starring Julia Roberts last summer. But Gilbert was allegedly bored with her own work by then.
According to the Atlantic, Gilbert had tired of her first memoir a year and a half ago and felt like breaking away from what has become an “Eat Pray Love” movement.
“I didn’t want to do it too soon because I thought it would be rude,” Gilbert said. “People love this book and they want to meet the person who wrote it. I’ve been the ambassador.”
Eager “to see the phenomenon through,” Gilbert waited until the movie’s release and her most recent book “Committed,” which is sort of a continuation of “Eat Pray Love,” to come out in paperback.
“I wanted to be polite to this thing that had happened, but I wanted to be home, I wanted to be gardening. I wanted to be with moss and ferns,” Gilbert said.