Review by Laura Beth Payne

In her successor to Eat, Pray, Love, Elizabeth Gilbert writes about her and her Brazilian fiancé Felipe as they travel to America to wed. When Felipe is refused entry into the States, the couple undertakes a trip around the world as they wait for Felipe’s green card. Faced with the anxiety of risking another marriage (and therefore divorce), Gilbert uses their travels to examine not only her own relationship, but also to research global notions of love, marriage and weddings. Ultimately she affirms that what a marriage needs is not more ideals, but reality and forgiveness.

This is not a novel, and it is most certainly not (to some readers’ disappointment) the story of a romantic romp around the globe. It cannot even be truly called a memoir. Rather, it is a musing on a subject that could otherwise be severely academic, and instead has been made intensely personal through Gilbert’s own lens of experience.

One of the most profound ideas she encounters in her research is the notion of spouse as human rather than something measured against an ideal. She wonders if perhaps American society has confused significant others with ideals, instead of viewing them (and ourselves) as humans first. Perhaps, she suggests, we have stymied our relationships with unrealistic cultural expectations.

While divorce may serve a relationship that has come to the end, Gilbert’s musings lead her to wonder how a relationship can actually survive two imperfect human beings. Her answer is drawn from her own experience, evoking what many may remember from Eat, Pray, Love: that is, forgiveness.

“Maybe creating a big enough space within your consciousness to hold and accept someone’s contradictions—someone’s idiocies, even—is a kind of divine act,” she writes. “Perhaps transcendence can be found not only on a solitary mountaintop or in monastic settings, but also at your own kitchen table, in the daily acceptance of your partner’s most tiresome, irritating faults.”

This becomes the essence of Gilbert’s idea of commitment: knowing one another and loving them anyway.

Admittedly, there’s something a little disgruntling in reading about someone else’s relationship troubles when their answer is to travel, and some of us are left to sort out our problems while cleaning out the cat litter box and hocking clothing to pay the rent. Nevertheless, Gilbert is too humble as a writer to dismiss. She writes carefully about divorce, romantic disenchantment and failed expectations in relationships.

Having experienced all of these (as chronicled in Eat, Pray, Love), she neither condemns nor moralizes (she writes strongly as one who lives in a glass house, and therefore should not throw stones). Simply, she points out that these are things that humans do. We routinely idolize, idealize, dismiss and disappoint other humans. Therefore, we will do the same to our spouses. We view them as our lovers, saviors, providers and friends, naturally expecting that they do this all perfectly, and feeling crushed when they do not.

Boring? Dry? A downer? It may be for some. Committed isn’t Twilight. However, Gilbert encourages us to seek the perspective we desperately need—that is, the ability to see ourselves and our significant others for who they truly are, rather than what we wish that they were—in order to actually love them and not a false image.

Ironically, Committed has had two subtitles: “A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage” and later “A Love Story.” The book is indeed a healthy read for skeptics or for those who are disenchanted with elusive fairy tale ideals. And yet, it is also a love story. If you can read her and Felipe’s acknowledgements of their faults to one another without simultaneously laughing and weeping, you need to check your hormone levels. And spoiler alert, Gilbert does find her peace, and she and Felipe marry.

Ultimately, what Gilbert offers us in Committed is the reminder us that wherever our relationships may lead, commitment is a choice to forgive and to offer grace to those we love. It is the true love which conquers all.

Laura Beth Payne is an MTSU professor, a member of the Read to Succeed Council and co-chair of the One Book Committee.