📚 Join Our October Book Club! 'All the Way to the River' by Elizabeth Gilbert

Lots of big feelings.

I adore

Elizabeth Gilbert

. Her book on creativity propelled me to finish my novel, and when I initiated my own divorce, it was Liz I quoted to my husband when I still struggled to find my own words. Unsurprisingly, I was quick to preorder her latest memoir, All the Way to the River, about her brief, intense relationship with her partner Rayya. It’s a wild book (Jia Tolentino wrote an excellent essay on it) and about halfway through, I found myself repelled by it.

When I admitted this to a friend over lunch last week, she reached across the table, took both my hands in hers, and said, “Leslie, that’s because Liz is your shadow.” Dammit. The moment she said it, I knew it was true. While I’ve never experienced anything quite like what Liz lived through, I’ve also lost myself entirely in relationships and have used partners to scaffold my self-esteem. This week, I dove back in, and now I am dying to talk about it.

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