One of the reasons I found myself so engrossed in this memoir of a woman’s year of travel through Italy, India and Indonesia is because Liz Gilbert is a very funny person. Though she is writing about a deeply personal and often internal journey, she does so with enough intelligence and self-depreciating wit that the book is a true pleasure to read. Within just a few pages, I found myself so engaged by her vivacious personality I wished I knew her personally.

I had mixed feelings about the middle section of the book, in which she spends four months at the ashram of her Indian guru. Being painfully aware of the hazards of guru relationships, reading about someone who is very into a guru can be difficult for me. To her credit, when she describes her spiritual explorations and the time she spent at the ashram, she remains focused more on her own process of growth and the people she meets in the ashram than on the guru herself. Ms. Gilbert has the capacity to find powerful stories to tell no matter where she is, so this book is always interesting. I just hope that at some point she decides to go back to India and write about all the other fascinating things she didn’t get to see by staying at the ashram the whole time.