Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Marriage in the Mirror

Committed.
By Elizabeth Gilbert
Viking, 2010.

ISBN 978 0 670 021165 9



Marriage in the Mirror

Once again Elizabeth Gilbert has given her readers a book long on charm. This time it is about marriage. She writes like a journalist. Her style is one most often found in an eight paragraph op-ed. A catchy idea and some utterly delightful one liners. It is nothing short of remarkable that she can sustain this for eight chapters.

Part of the pith of Gilbert’s writing comes from the fact that she dares to break the rules. To use language for which in her mother’s generation kids got their mouths washed out with soap. Gilbert bashes tradition, ridicules time honored ideas, and prides herself in being a rebel. This out-of-the-box style has become Gilbert’s signature. Her style is seductively naughty. She is a literary flirt.

So why read this book? For entertainment, of course. But it is also a lively case study of what happens when narcissism is promoted from personal habits to a general theory of everything. It is a personal statement of Gilbert’s views on marriage; but it is also a very revealing statement about herself, her husband and lovers, her family, her friends, and her ex-husband. She chose to call it “Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage.” She could just as well have called it “I’m so Wonderful: How I Decided that Everything’s About Me.”

To purchase this book go to: http://www.bargainbookstores.com/Committed-A-Skeptic-Makes-Peace-with/M/0670021652.htm