I picked up New York Times bestselling author Elizabeth Gilbert's new book "Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage" with more than a little apprehension. At first, I gave Gilbert the benefit of the doubt and ignored the alarms set off by the book's loud display and its prominent location next to towers of such literary gems as "Going Rogue" and "The Lost Symbol." But the tome's embarrassing cover a shiny gold wedding ring with the title engraved in flowing cursive, set against a bright orange background made me cower in the checkout line.
Ostensibly, "Committed" is chick-lit. And not just any chick-lit, but chick-lit for the masses commercialized, popularized and trivialized. Bestseller material.
But while Gilbert's newest work admittedly has a broad appeal to women, it is not plagued by the sensationalist literary tactics or lack of thematic substance so common in chick-lit. Instead, the work is a thoughtful, well-researched study of the institution of marriage and its implications for women of all times and places from medieval brides and the Hmong mountain women of Vietnam to Gilbert herself.
As in "Eat, Pray, Love," (2006) Gilbert's own life serves as the linchpin of the narrative. In terms of plot, "Committed" starts where Gilbert's previous work left off following a messy divorce, Gilbert launches on an international journey of self-discovery, which ends in "happily ever after" for the memoirist and her handsome, not to mention Brazilian, new boyfriend.
However, everything changes when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security gets involved. Apparently, "the three month visa waiver that the United States government offers to citizens of friendly countries is not intended for indefinite consecutive visits." Gilbert's sweetheart, who has unwittingly been violating federal law, is thrown in jail for the night and kicked out of the country. The only solution? Boyfriend-girlfriend need to get hitched.
But in the past, Gilbert has been disillusioned by the institution of marriage by the love it can suck out of a relationship and the unfair burden she believes it places on the females involved. In hopes of reconciling these two sentiments, Gilbert decides to undertake a fierce examination of marriage: "I hoped that all this studying might somehow mitigate my deep aversion to marriage What I really wanted, more than anything, was to find a way to somehow embrace marriage to Felipe when the big day came rather than merely swallowing my fate like a hard and awful pill."
What follows is a thoroughly enjoyable, often witty and sometimes fascinating rumination on marriage from ancient times to the present. In an introductory note to the reader, Gilbert describes her book as "another memoir (with extra socio-historical bonus sections!)," and it is precisely those odd-but-interesting bonus sections that draw the reader into Gilbert's tale, which is unfortunately quite bland.
In China, for instance, we learn that young women often found independence through ghost marriages, in which they married dead men: "There was no better path to autonomy for an ambitious young businesswoman than to be married off to a respectable corpse," Gilbert writes.
In ancient Rome, marriages between aristocratic men were legal, and in early Christian church history, marriage was not a sacred institution but a submission to carnal desires that was to be avoided at all costs. These interesting and wittily conveyed factoids compensate for some of the memoir's flaws, including a relative lack of plot. ("Eat, Pray, Love" fans be warned fabulous international adventures involving tasty Italian food are conspicuously lacking this time around).
The New York Times has called Gilbert one of the most likeable writers you will ever encounter. It is precisely Glibert's genuinely nice personality that saves the book from its shortcomings (and its front cover). I came away from "Committed" utterly charmed, armed with a book that felt like a friend. Maybe "Committed" is chick-lit, but it's soulful chick-lit chick-lit I'm not afraid to say I enjoyed.
