MOST husbands call their wives to ask what cut of steak to bring home from the grocery store. Elizabeth Gilbert's husband rang her from Vietnam and asked, "Do I have permission to buy a 7,000-pound marble Buddha?"
Her answer: "You don't need permission, ever."
That eight-foot-high Buddha now beams down beatifically outside the entrance to Two Buttons, a store jam-packed with curios from Southeast Asia. Ms. Gilbert, 41, the author of the 2006 memoir "Eat, Pray, Love," owns the shop in Frenchtown, N.J., with her husband, José Nunes.
The Brazilian-born Mr. Nunes, 58, a gemstone dealer who wooed Ms. Gilbert when both were living in Bali, is better known, at least to readers of "Eat, Pray, Love," by the pseudonym Felipe.
Got that? She's 41, he's 58. Well, no freakin' wonder he "wooed her . . . in Bali." He was just surprised to find a girl who liked him who was his daughter's age.
Friends told me they liked this book, so I wanted to believe it. It's hard, though, now that it's been turned into a woman's movie where absolutely nothing is true. They want us to believe our dreams are attainable, but in the background Liz is cuddling with some dude in AARP.
So, my friends, crow about the movie's spirituality all you want, but I'll be stuck on the part where, if they'd portrayed the relationship correctly, Julia Roberts would be chased around Indonesia by Wilford Brimley.
1 comment:
After seeing how many women were reading this book, I knew I'd never read it. Any movie based on a book that I saw at least three times a day, uh-uh.
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