Love, actually, frankly

This is a tribute, a memoir, a self-help manual all rolled into one. It’s written with the blazing honesty and startling vulnerability that Elizabeth Gilbert, the bestselling author of Eat Pray Love, is known and loved for by millions of fans.

Gilbert, in this reviewer’s opinion, is going for a Love Story (the cult classic by Erich Segal) vibe, then veers off the path strewn with rose petals to give us a close look at her tumultuous relationship with her partner, Rayya Elias, right till the latter’s death from liver and pancreatic cancer.

There is no ambiguity about the tribute Gilbert pays to someone she loved with all of her heart, first as a dear friend, then as a romantic partner, then as someone who could and did wreak havoc in the author’s life, now as a ‘god of her understanding’ to whom she turns often, asking for help, succour and advice from the deceased soul, and what’s more, convinced she’s getting feedback of some sort from beyond the grave.

Years ago, Gibert went to Rayya who was a hairdresser of Syrian origin to get her hair done; captivated by the woman’s molasses laugh, her candour, her junkie-forever-attempting-to-get-on-the-straight-path lifestyle, Gilbert stayed by Rayya, with Rayya for years, right till she had walked the latter all the way down to the river, all the way to the woman’s painful and difficult death. En route, she set Rayya up in a church converted into a house, bought her all sorts of luxury gifts, indulged her, and revelled in the deep bond they had between them.

There is a flinching edge to the memoir angle of this book. Gilbert tells us that she is a sex and love addict who went into a 12-step recovery programme but didn’t stay to finish it. She holds a mirror to her addiction, to her yearnings, to how she coped with the downsides of the relationship with Rayya when the Syrian quit her own rehab and went back to dope and drink.

Fully knowing she might well earn the disapproval of some of her fans, Gilbert spills the tea on some unsavoury details, like how she looked the other way when her partner hit her addictions again, scaling it up incrementally and damagingly, packing their shared apartment with narcotics.

Where the self-help angle enters is when the author takes readers through some parts of her rehabilitation programme for her sex and love addiction, then does the same with some of what is prescribed for Rayya regarding both her cancer and her junkie habit.

In the ‘let it all hang out’ style now familiar to Gilbert’s readers, she shares everything, or almost everything, putting every weakness, every hesitant step forward, every backslide out there on the page, even as she underlines just what the results of these actions are.

The advice is plentiful on how to get out of the negative impact of one’s own addictions, as well as of those caused by others’ addictions.

Rayya Elias’ wild past as an ex-convict, an on-off junkie and drug dealer, someone who lived many years of her life in the streets, Gilbert’s own battles with codependency, neediness, dope, all will strike chords with those who scrape the bottom of the barrel similarly, those looking up for support, guidance, a way out, any way out.

The story of ‘a pair of untreated addicts on a slow collision course’ walks the border between tender and maudlin at times.

Since the book begins with a visitation by Rayya some five years after her death, the reader is made well aware that they will be taking this journey to the water’s edge with Gilbert, with Rayya. The text is interspersed with poetry and rough sketches. The language is contemporary, direct, gentle, but firm.

To this reviewer, most times the book read like Elizabeth Gilbert’s diary jottings. And all through, it was more tell than show.

Then again, the way Gilbert links the book’s title to her act of staying with Rayya all the way till the latter died, how she uses New York City streets as a metaphor for friendship, how, at the end, she tells Rayya people’s stories, and her brief meditation on the nature of death are all neat pieces of writing.

We’re both walking a brave path here,
I have to be brave enough to die,
And you have to be brave enough to live.

Although her characteristic in-your-face style might appeal to some readers, and her tips might even help those in recovery from addictions, this personal growth story, which might have been inchoate in the hands of a less talented writer, is still not high literature. Just so you know.