A Narcissist Travels the World and Sees Only Herself
If this book were fiction and entitled "A Narcissist Travels the World but Sees Only Herself" it might be interesting as irony. As is, however, the combination of self-absorption and spiritual pretensions is intolerable.

Just about any religion has at least two components, an ethical component emphasizing how one should treat others and a spiritual component concerning one's relation to the deity. Take the ethical component alone and you get secular humanism which some of us are actually quite fond of. Take the yearning for spiritual solace alone and you get New Age.

When her sister tells her about a family struck with a double tragedy of cancer her Gilbertism is "Dear God, that family needs grace." Her sister replies, "That family needs casseroles," and organizes the neighborhood to bring dinner to the family. Gilbert - I do not know if my sister fully recognizes that this is grace. But one has to wonder about Gilbert's idea of a spiritual grace that doesn't seem to involve empathetic awareness of others -- I don't think we are about to see Gilbert making any casseroles.

Having recently read Mark Salzman's "Iron and Silk" Iron and Silkabout his year teaching in China and his long-time love of Chinese martial arts I couldn't help but contrast his self-deprecating tone and his awareness of another culture and of other people. Salzman sees other's generosity where Gilbert only sees her own magnetic personality. Salzman portrays both how attractive and how alien another culture can be. He sees other people where Gilbert sees only herself. Salzman remains aware and responsive to how taxing to themselves and their family the generousity of people living in poverty can be - Gilbert remains oblivious.

In one vignette, Salzman describes how he draws a picture of a fishing boat and gives the picture to the owners of the boat. The fisherman then wants to give the boat to Salzman. Salzman recognizes that he must accept something and says that in his country the proper gift for something artistic is something else artistic and asks for and gets each member of the family to sing him a folk song. It is not just that Gilbert lacks empathetic skill, but seems to be uninterested in feelings other than her own.

Give her a break...
My wife got this book (from the library) on a recommendation from someone who she can't remember. Just as well; after 150 pages, she threw it into the "return" pile saying the author was a spoiled, self-centered brat.

Out of curiousity, I picked it up and managed to get through it. I say cut the writer some slack.

The book does suffer from two things. The first is the author's refusal to discuss anything about her apparently very emotionally draining divorce which seemed to be the underpining for the whole thing. Some understanding of how she got to where she felt she needed to take this journey would have given the entire book more substance. Second, the book would have benefitted from some much sharper editing. There is some substance here but you have to read, sometimes for over 100 pages at a time, to find it. About 150 pages or so would have accomplished just as much for the reading public.

However, don't knock her personally. No one was / is financially dependent on her and she did self-fund the whole thing from her book advance which her publisher felt she had earned based on her previous writing successes. So, if she wants to go off for awhile (but a whole year....jeeezzz)to "find herself," cut her some slack and treat this as a form of self-therapy for the writer with some travel stuff thrown in to try to keep it interesting.

Great Summer Read!
I found this book a wonderful read. Leaving herself open to the world, the author shares her journey to self-awareness. She seeks something that some in this world will probably never understand for she has a desire to heal herself from within. Through her search, she finds that the Divine has been living inside of her all the time, just waiting for her to find the "bliss" of connection. As a pastor, this is a message that I would gladly share with the great majority of people who are hurting deep inside, those who don't know yet that if they reconnect with their Maker (whatever they call their Maker!) those hurts can be healed.

Great Book! Couldn't put it down until I finished.
From beginning to end I was fascinated with this book. I think it is a great book for any woman to read. Immediately after I finished it I mailed it to my mom to read and told her when she was finished to give it to another woman. It was insightful,funny, and easy to relate to. I cannot wait to read another one of her books!

I think she grew as a person
I love travel, personal search for meaning books and although, this wasn't a great book, it was entertaining and I think she grew as a person, some of the country observations were nice. A nice book--don't agree that is has great spiritual insight, but we are on a search for meaning. This is one woman's search.. Perfect for plane travel