{"id":54818,"date":"2021-11-12T14:38:00","date_gmt":"2021-11-12T18:38:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=54818"},"modified":"2021-11-24T16:00:29","modified_gmt":"2021-11-24T20:00:29","slug":"big-magic-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/big-magic-book-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Big Magic: Book Review and Critical Reception"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Is Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic<\/em> worth reading? What is the key premise you can take away from the book? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Big Magic<\/em> is author Elizabeth Gilbert\u2019s guide to leading a more fulfilled life<\/a> by making creativity, in any guise that suits you, a part of your daily existence. The book offers both spiritual wisdom on how to work with the magical forces of creativity, as well as suggestions on how to create effectively and productively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The following Big Magic<\/em> book review covers the book’s context, background, and critical reception. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

About the Author<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Elizabeth Gilbert is a bestselling author. Her first published work was a short story collection, Pilgrims<\/em><\/a> (1997), which was a finalist for the PEN\/Hemingway award. She followed this with a novel, Stern Men<\/em><\/a> (2000); and a work of nonfiction, The Last American Man<\/em><\/a> (2002), which was a finalist for the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. During her early career, she also worked as a journalist for Spin, GQ, and The New York Times magazine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Gilbert became a household name when her best-selling memoir, Eat Pray Love<\/em><\/a>, was published in 2006. In it, Gilbert recounts her post-divorce journey to Italy, India, and Indonesia to make sense of her life. Eat Pray Love<\/em> sold over 10 million copies globally<\/a> and was adapted into a film starring Julia Roberts in 2010. One critic later would describe the mania over Eat Pray Love<\/em> as \u201cGilbert fever<\/a>.\u201d In 2008, TIME listed Gilbert as one of its 100 most influential people<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some critics of Gilbert\u2019s felt that Eat Pray Love<\/em> marked a decline in her career<\/a>. They saw her smash-hit memoir as being self-involved and insubstantial and a step down from her more serious journalistic work. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

After Eat Pray Love, <\/em>Gilbert published Committed<\/em><\/a> <\/em>in 2010, which chronicles her love affair-turned-marriage with a Brazilian man she met in Indonesia (about whom she first wrote in Eat Pray Love<\/em>). <\/em>In 2013, she published The Signature of All Things<\/em><\/a>, <\/em>a novel about a 19th-century female botanist\u2019s around-the-world adventures. She followed this up with Big Magic <\/em>in 2015, <\/em>and, in 2019, City of Girls<\/em><\/a>, a novel that follows a young woman arriving on the New York theater scene in the 1940s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Connect with Elizabeth Gilbert:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n