"Eat, Pray, Love" author Elizabeth Gilbert steps back from the spotlight
Eat? Been there! Pray? Done that. Love? Yawn.
Elizabeth Gilbert, author of the stratospherically popular memoir-turned-movie 鈥�Eat, Pray, Love,鈥� is ready to move on. Really.
Gilbert delivered her final performance on 鈥淓at, Pray, Love鈥� at a New York Public Library talk last Thursday. It was, according to , her final bow: 鈥淸Elizabeth Gilbert will] speak in public for the last time about her 'Eat, Pray, Love' journey before retiring to a quieter life of, as she puts it, 鈥榳orking on slow fiction and even slower gardening,鈥� 鈥� the announcement read.
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Gilbert's memoir-cum-travelogue-cum-inspirational-self-help-guide sold more than 4 million copies, dominated the top spot on the New York Times bestseller list for 57 weeks, was translated into over 30 languages, and of course, earned Gilbert a flattering film portrayal by Julia Roberts. But that whiz-bang success also made 鈥淓at, Pray, Love鈥� 鈥渟ynonymous with something very poppy and chick lit-y,鈥� the author said in her NYPL talk, noting that for all its success, 鈥淓at, Pray, Love鈥� didn鈥檛 get the literary accolades her earlier works did. (鈥淧ilgrims,鈥� her first collection of short stories, was a finalist for the PEN/Hemingway Prize.)
After a hectic decade of personal and professional transformation, Gilbert says she鈥檚 ready to move into the slow lane and move back to fiction.
"I got my start as a fiction writer and haven't written fiction in over a decade," .
Her next work will be a historical novel about 19th-century botanists, which Gilbert is now researching.
鈥淚t's an oasis to return to fiction, and I love gardening, so it's a way for me to write about the thing I love the most right now,鈥� she said.
Don鈥檛 hold your breath. She called the project 鈥渟low fiction,鈥� saying 鈥淚鈥檓 in no rush鈥� to finish.
鈥淚'm ushering in this book and stepping out of the spotlight and retiring to a life of gardening and slow fiction.鈥�
鈥淪ow, Water, Wait,鈥� anyone?
Husna Haq is a Monitor correspondent.
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