The only event more hazardous to a writer’s career than a book’s catastrophic failure is its meteoric success. Hatching the successor to a book that sold 7 million copies in more than 30 countries is particularly challenging when the blockbuster owed its appeal to the author’s self-deprecating, aw-shucks charm in the face of difficult circumstances. Readers loved Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Eat, Pray, Love’’ because they fell for Gilbert herself, and their affection owed largely to the way female readers identified with her situation - reeling from a nasty divorce, just dumped by her rebound lover, massively uncertain about her future - and the inspiration they took from her courage and candor as she recovered her equilibrium through Italian food, yogic meditation, and a lovely new man.
I do. Don’t I?
Elizabeth Gilbert follows her bestseller about finding love with a slightly less winning consideration of marriage
So how do you follow a fairy-tale ending?
“Committed,’’ Gilbert’s fourth book - there were a pair of non-bestsellers before her first memoir - begins with a note acknowledging the difficulty in following what Gilbert calls her “megajumbo international bestseller,” then goes on to probe the very institution that is implied but never described in fairy tales: marriage. The book picks up soon after “Eat, Pray, Love’’ leaves off, when the author and Felipe, the Brazilian world traveler she met in Bali, confront a bureaucratic dilemma: His temporary visa to the United States is yanked after the couple abuses its provisions and the only way to live together in any kind of bliss, according to an improbably friendly Homeland Security officer, is to wed. (It should be noted that another charm of Gilbert’s work, and likely of the author herself, is how many people she encounters turn out to be, in her telling at least, improbably friendly.)
It takes nearly a year for the couple to amass the proper paperwork and receive the necessary clearances, giving them ample time to travel through Asia, living in cheap hotels (because crazy bestsellerdom hasn’t quite struck yet) and thinking, talking, and reading about marriage itself. The resulting book braids together Gilbert’s research - or, really, her sometimes breathless, often engaging retelling of her research - and her own musings on her first marriage, her parents’ marriage, and her future marriage to Felipe. I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by telling you that in the end, the two do tie the knot; the suspense here is in how Gilbert will justify the decision to herself.