Committed
Commitment
Elizabeth Gilbert shot to fame with her autobiographical book Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything, a runaway success following its publication in 2006. It tells the story of her travels across continents searching for meaning in life – spiritual and personal – following her divorce after eight years of marriage. It ends with her falling in love with a Brazilian-born Australian citizen, Felipe. The story was made into a major film of the same title starring Julia Roberts and Javier Bardem released in 2010.
Committed: A Love Story (published in 2010) picks up the story. 
With difficult divorces behind them both, Felipe and Elizabeth are resolved never to marry or to have children. They have exchanged vows to that effect along with promises of eternal fidelity. But their best intentions are met by a serious obstacle: Felipe cannot reside permanently in the USA unless he is legally married to an American citizen; Elizabeth is unwilling to settle permanently anywhere else except in the same country as her family. Thwarted by the law and bureaucracy they travel extensively, live frugally, struggle with their consciences and their conflicts; they even spend time apart. But the authorities are adamant: marriage is the only way for them to live together permanently in the States. To this particular couple it feels like a prison sentence.
Gilbert’s response is to delve into what marriage really means – across cultures, across countries, across the centuries. She debunks assorted myths and received wisdom, she unravels statistics and probabilities, she doesn’t shy away from the intimate details of their experiences, their inner doubts and fears. And through that experience she discovers where un-negotiable boundaries lie, where compromises must be made, and what at the end of the day is most important in life.
It’s a heart-warmingly intimate story, sharing vulnerability and mistakes, eminently readable and refreshingly honest, and feels like a happy-ever-after ending which is heartening in itself. The analytical approach will force many a reader to examine their own marriages, I suspect!
However, the Internet reveals that Gilbert’s marriage to Felipe (real name José) ended in 2016 after just nine years, and she has since had short-term relationships with others of both sexes. Takes one back to the essential premises she establishes in Commitment to ask the questions all over again.