Eat, Pray, Love certainly isn’t without its critics. Although many praised Gilbert’s writing as highly relatable, it also stoked commentary on the wealth and whiteness that made her story possible. A 2010 Bitch magazine review of the memoir coined the term “priv-lit” to describe “literature or media whose expressed goal is one of spiritual, existential, or philosophical enlightenment contingent upon women’s hard work, commitment, and patience, but whose actual barriers to entry are primarily financial.”
A quick search of the book title on social media turns up as many fond comments about comfort reads as jokes about women’s midlife crises. But the fact that people are still talking about the book two decades after its publication is proof of the story’s immense staying power.
Why We Can’t Get Enough of EAT, PRAY, LOVE
It’s undeniable that Gilbert’s personal journey spoke to millions of readers. Her broad search for meaning touches on “the biggest and oldest questions of any human life,” as Gilbert explores in her preface to the 10th anniversary edition of Eat, Pray, Love released in 2016: “Who am I? Who does my life belong to? What is my relationship to divinity? What have I come here to do? Do I have the right to change my own path?”
These are questions that women have been discouraged from fully grappling with throughout history. The concept of a woman seeking a divorce for undisclosed personal reasons, traveling the world unchaperoned, and engaging in intellectual debates about religion and spirituality still felt relatively unusual in 2006. The book hit shelves at a time when divorce rates had been at an alarming high for twenty-five years. Those rates have dipped over the past two decades, but divorce continues to force people (especially women) to rethink their life trajectories. The cyclical conservative cultural swings of 2006, 2016, and again today in 2026 keep calling women’s role in society into question. And Gilbert’s memoir still offers solace in a world where women are expected to deny their own wants and needs in order to be better wives and mothers.
Extended world travel is as out of reach for many readers in 2026 as it was in 2006. But the book allows us to experience the joys, pains, and unlikely discoveries of globetrotting from the comfort of our own couches.
I spoke with Rebecca Saletan, Vice President and Editorial Director at Riverhead Books, about the cultural phenomenon and lasting legacy of Eat, Pray, Love. “There’s not a reader alive who does not identify with both the dilemma of being at a stuck point in life — even when you’ve gotten what you thought you wanted — and with the fantasy of getting to run away from it all and explore your fondest dreams, no matter how supposedly impractical,” Saletan, who has edited Gilbert’s nonfiction books since 2015’s Big Magic, said when asked about why the memoir resonated so strongly with readers. “And that voice! Real, confiding, self-knowing, often hilarious — like your best version of your best friend. It’s an irresistible combination.”
The book’s tidy three-act structure and short, vignette-style chapters averaging three to four pages make for popcorn reading at its finest. And there’s a voyeuristic pleasure in following Gilbert’s adventures and personal dramas. Extended world travel is as out of reach for many readers in 2026 as it was in 2006. But the book allows us to experience the joys, pains, and unlikely discoveries of globetrotting from the comfort of our own couches. We can drool over descriptions of Italian delicacies without having to navigate language differences to buy a bigger pair of pants. We can enjoy the humor and wisdom of colorful characters like Ketut the Balinese medicine man and unlikely yoga mentor Richard from Texas without having to scrub ashram floors or get hit by an Indonesian bus.
I was a teenager in Arkansas when I first read Eat, Pray, Love shortly after its release. At the time, its portrayal of unencumbered single womanhood felt new and full of promise to me, having grown up with constant comments about how “one day, when you get married and have kids of your own, you’ll be a real adult.” My life was already mapped out for me, and the path I was pushed to take made me feel lost from the start. Gilbert’s glorious selfishness gave me a glimmer of hope that I might dare to wander off the path.
When I returned to the book again this year, I was the same age as Gilbert when she took her year abroad. And like Gilbert, my personal search for meaning and authenticity since 2006 led me to realize I’m queer. I recognize today how Gilbert scraped up against the walls of heteronormativity in her divorce narrative, and why the idea of being a traditional wife and mother made her want to crawl out of her own skin and go somewhere, anywhere else. I imagine Gilbert, too, might recognize some of her latent queerness written between the lines of Eat, Pray, Love in a 2026 reread.
Some of Gilbert’s anecdotes haven’t aged well. Some of her bold feminist declarations feel less revolutionary to me than they did before I got a graduate degree in gender studies. Yet Gilbert’s fairytale — getting a lucrative book deal to spend a year traipsing around the world considering life’s biggest questions — still offers a satisfying escape from the responsibilities the rest of us can’t afford to leave behind. Readers can even pick up tips for meditation, spiritual balance, and inner peace along the way. As Ina Garten says, if you can’t take a year to circle the globe to find your place in the universe, “[book]store-bought is fine”.
How EAT, PRAY, LOVE Changed the Memoir Game
Gilbert’s memoir changed the lives of countless readers who took inspiration to go on their own brave journeys. It also inspired countless writers to chase her success with their own big stunts.
“I don’t know that it was the first memoir to wed a journey of personal exploration with wisdom acquired (and so imparted to the reader) along the way, but it was certainly the most successful,” editor Saletan shared. “It blew open the possibilities of the genre and raised the industry’s perception of its potential readership.”
Stunt memoirs weren’t new in 2006. Consider Nelly Bly’s 1887 expose of a women’s asylum from the inside, Ten Days in a Mad-House. But today, you’ll almost always hear Eat, Pray, Love used as an example in explanations of stunt memoirs. (That explanation, in case you need it: a piece of writing in which the author describes pursuing an intriguing challenge or mission. Like, say, spending a year exploring desire, spirituality, and passion through international travel.) Gilbert put a fresh and deeply personal twist on the stunt memoir, unafraid of revealing her own mistakes and insecurities alongside her bold adventures and forays into new love.
Whether you hate it or love it (or eat it, or pray for it), you can’t deny that Eat, Pray, Love has made an indelible mark on our world.
Gilbert paved the way for a string of popular stunt memoirs centered around women seeking self-fulfillment: Gretchen Rubin’s The Happiness Project in 2009, Cheryl Strayed’s Wild in 2012, and Shonda Rhimes’s Year of Yes in 2015, to name a few. In 2016, Gilbert herself wrote an introduction for the anthology Eat, Pray, Love Made Me Do It, in which a variety of writers shared their own adventures inspired by the massive bestseller.
Twenty years later, authors and publishers continue to chase Gilbert’s elusive success. “We editors see it in the ongoing parade of memoirs submitted to us,” Saletan shares. “Few writers, though, approach Liz’s mastery of storytelling or the intensity and immediacy she is able to create on the page. It may read as effortless, but it’s art!”
A search on Publishers Marketplace shows 36 book deals across memoir and fiction in the past two decades comparing themselves to Eat, Pray, Love. The most recent was announced on January 26, 2026, literally the day I’m writing this. I’d bet real money (not eat-my-way-through-Italy money) that we’ll see it used in more comps before the end of the year. But statistically, it’s unlikely that any imitator will match the stunning success of Gilbert’s international bestseller.
I asked Rebecca Saletan for a glimpse into Gilbert’s process, and she graciously shared a few insights. “Liz’s not-so-secret secret is that she works like a demon and metabolizes editorial feedback with incredible openness, even when it touches on very personal material,” Saletan shared. “Big Magic nearly doubled in size from the first draft I read because Liz was so responsive to the idea of widening its message not only to readers who thought of themselves as ‘creatives’ but to anyone who chimed with the idea of simply living creatively and fearlessly. At the same time, she is very sure of what she wants to say, which makes her an editor’s dream.”
Whether you hate it or love it (or eat it, or pray for it), you can’t deny that Eat, Pray, Love has made an indelible mark on our world. It paved a new way forward for women — or anyone, really — looking to reinvent themselves. In 2026, it reads at once like a time capsule to the early aughts and a timeless search for personal freedom. It’s hard to imagine Eat, Pray, Love ever falling out of the zeitgeist entirely. Don’t agree? Well then, perhaps you can convince a publisher to give you a sizable advance to travel to Italy, India, and Indonesia and see how the locals feel about the book’s impact. Maybe you’ll learn something about yourself along the way.
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