Committed

I didn't even read Elizabeth Gilbert's book before I went to see the movie version, Eat, Pray, Love. I'm pretty sure every woman I know--at least all the ones I talked to--HAD read the book. But based on rave reviews of that book by friends, and a favorable impression of the movie, when my friend Marianne offered to loan me the follow up to that story in audiobook form, I took it. It is basically about Gilbert's year long quest to learn everything she could about marriage in order to come to terms with the situation faced by her and her partner, Felipe. For reasons unknown, Homeland Security decided at some point in their commuter relationship that Felipe could no longer come to the United States. Didn't matter that he was an Australian citizen, that he had done business in the United States for years. He simply couldn't return. And they found this out while on the way home to Philadelphia when he was detained and questioned for several hours, then imprisoned until he could be flown out of the country. The only option was for them to marry, but neither of them really wanted to, due to bad divorces from their first spouses, and it wasn't all that easy to get permission. So in the intervening months, while an immigration lawyer worked on the beaurocratic hurdles, they tried to live as cheaply as possible in southeast Asia, eventually returning to Felipe's previous home in Bali. But in the meantime, Gilbert engaged in an unrelenting research project, reading everything she could get hands on and interviewing every person she came across. And we learn what she learns. I was reminded at times of starting to read Karen Armstrong's A History of God. I realized afresh, in connection with this specific social institution, that what we know today, what people tell us has been the history of marriage, is but a small fraction of it's overall role in the course of human civilization. The reasons people marry have changed, who gets to decide who gets married has changed, even whether or not marriage is a good thing has changed. Contrary to popular religious rhetoric, the Christian churches originally sought to stop all marriage--and of course sexual behavior. The pace of the book ebbs and flows, and occasionally her dithering gets a bit tedious, but I learned so much at an intellectual level, and resonated so often at a personal level, that I wouldn't hesitate to recommend Committed. She writes wonderfully and that in and of itself is a treat.