At the end of Eat, Pray, Love, we know that author Elizabeth Gilbert has met a Brazilian gentleman named Felipe and fallen in love.
Felipe is a pseudonym, but that's not the important point here. Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage is about what happens later between Elizabeth and Felipe. They have both been burned in bad marriages, and want to be together without being married.
The Department of Homeland Security finds this unacceptable and stops allowing Felipe into the United States unless and until the two wed. Thus begins a book that is a combination travelogue, memoir, and ethnography of marriage. Gilbert examines marriage in different cultures and across history in an effort to make peace with re-entering an institution she didn't want to re-enter.
It's an entertaining and sympathetic book that also provides a lot of information on the history of marriage around the world. I enjoyed it, and fans of Gilbert's writing are sure to do the same.
