Committed

Gilbert, Elizabeth.  Committed: A Love Story.  New York: Penguin Books, 2010.

[E]very intimacy carries, secreted somewhere below its initial lovely surfaces, the ever-coiled makings of complete catastrophe.

- Elizabeth Gilbert

*~*~*

As lovely and introspective and redemptive as Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love proved to be, I regret my need to say that the novel that follows, Committed, is shallow both by comparison and in its own right.  In Committed, Gilbert grapples with her reluctance to remarry following a devastating divorce, a reluctance she is forced to confront when her Brazilian boyfriend, Felipe, is deported from the U.S. and denied further entry unless he can obtain a visa through marriage to an American citizen.  While traveling abroad and waiting for Felipe’s immigration papers to be processed, Gilbert seeks to understand and define marriage, hoping to discover or create a version of matrimony that both guarantees her independence as a woman and satisfies her family and U.S. officials.  The book that emerges from this journey, however, seems more like Gilbert’s publisher’s attempt to capitalize on the success of Eat, Pray, Love than a genuine exploration of marital commitment.

Gilbert acknowledges early on that she cannot begin to tackle the concept of marriage as fully and deeply as she would like.  What she produces, though, does not even approach an attempt.  She asks a few Vietnamese women to relay their tales of how they got married.  She expresses reservations about becoming part of a tradition that has historically been used to deprive women of their property, money, and rights.  She asks if pledging eternal love and exchanging rings in the privacy of a hotel room constitutes a spiritual, if not a legal, marriage.  Mostly, though, she discusses Felipe’s restlessness and her anxiety during their eight months of expatriation.  The novel essentially describes a long waiting period, and we, as readers, feel as though we wait with them as we read.

Committed, then, emerges as a jerky, superficial discussion of marriage rather than a true exploration of matrimonial bonds.  Reading this book feels like waiting in an airport for a long overdue flight.  My recommendation is to read Eat, Pray, Love — even though the conclusion deprives us of the satisfaction of a wedding — and to skip Committed, for the self-indulgence of the former novel is far preferable to the expedient composition of the latter.

Filed under Book Reviews | Comment (0)