Elizabeth Gilbert: Eat, Pray, Love

By now it seems most of the folks in the U.S. have either bought or loaned from the library, Elizabeth Gilbert's book Eat, Pray, Love. I read this book last year when it first came out. While I liked it and recommended it to my friends who had been to India and Bali (they tend to go together on certain people's itinerary's), it was not a great book, and in my opinion does not warrant being on the best seller booklist a year later. However, if you do wish to read a great piece of writing by her then look no further then her The Famous Torn and Restored Lit Cigarette Trick piece. I have read this several times now and am always delighted by the way she sets up the story to reach its climatic end. Not only that, it is a just a wonderful story. It can be found in The Paris Review number 141 Winter 1996. I believe it has also been included in a later anthology that the magazine did.