Episode 99: [BOOK CLUB] What Memoir Writers Can Learn from Reading "All the Way to the River"

In this episode, Memoir Writing Coach, Elizabeth Wilson, discusses Elizabeth Gilbert's memoir, All the Way to the River: 

• Why All the Way to the River sparked mixed reactions from readers and why those reactions matter for memoir writers
• How relying on a linear structure can strain a memoir when multiple themes (addiction, grief, love, death) are competing for attention
• Signs a memoir might benefit from a thematic structure instead of heavy backstory
• The difference between showing lived experience and telling the reader how to interpret it
• Why withholding emotions and bodily reactions creates distance between the writer and the reader
• How self-help interruptions, poetry, or artwork can weaken a memoir if they don’t deepen emotional understanding
• The importance of trusting the reader even when your story invites judgment
• How controlling the reader’s perspective can signal lingering codependency or fear of being disliked
• What it means to be “ready” to write a memoir, and the red flags that suggest more time or distance is needed
• Why relatability comes from emotional truth, not shared circumstances
• Common memoir pitfalls even bestselling authors can fall into
• Practical reminders for memoir writers about vulnerability, structure, and emotional access

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Transcript

Elizabeth Wilson: 1:16

Welcome back listeners to the Special Book Club episode of The Inspired Writer Collective. I'm your host, Elizabeth. Today we're gonna be talking about Elizabeth Gilbert's latest memoir all the Way to the River, which chronicles some of her relationships and addiction and death. So. Stephanie was originally planning to join me to record this episode. However, she started with the audio book version, uh, which is narrated by Elizabeth Gilbert and was so put off by the narrative. She tried to switch to the written form and just really struggled to get through this book. And it's interesting because this is. Partly why we chose this book. For one, it's a memoir. It's by a well-known author who has had very successful books in the past, um, including Eat, pray, love, as well as Big magic, which I, I really enjoyed. Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic and related to writing and her creative process. Um, but it was reviews that. We're sort of mixed about this latest memoir from Elizabeth Gilbert that encouraged Stephanie and I to pick it for this book club discussion.'cause we wanna talk about. Books in relation to the kind of topics that I help memoir writers walk through in our memoir master plan cohort. So today I wanna talk about the core message of Elizabeth Gilbert's latest book. I wanna talk about the structure and. Whether or not I think it worked, um, as well as the relatability and so ahead of time, I looked up a couple of different reviews to get a general idea of what people were saying about this book, and I think some of these will indicate why Stephanie had a hard time with it as well. The New York Times actually wrote one that said excruciating missed opportunity. Dilutes a powerful story of love, addiction and loss with saccharin self-indulgence. And I just kept seeing that over and over again. And I had a similar kind of takeaway where the story itself was very engaging. Like I was, I was into the storyline. I mean, it was. Almost one train wreck after another as far as like the narrative. But there were, she interweaves all of these poems and this, these drawings. And, um, she also has chosen to dabble into some chapters that really speak directly to the reader, more of like a self-help memoir combo when she talks about addiction and recovery. And I really wasn't into to those. Um, it broke up the narrative story. It took me out of the narrative moment, and I just don't think it added any value to my understanding of her, her emotional state, her thought process, or. Really anything. So I, I can understand where maybe this, this self-indulgence, you know, piece came along for some readers. Um, one of the reviewers on good read said it was engrossing, if not quite frustrating to read, and others highlighted the fact that while they read it, you know, within just a few days, you know, they really just didn't have the same sort of. Take away overall relatability that they got from her bestselling, eat, pray, love, which is how so many people found Elizabeth Gilbert in the first place and first encountered her writing. There are some others who, other reviewers who are a little bit kinder in the way that they reflect. Where Gilbert is in the writing of this story, this is, there's a lot. There's death, there's grief, there's addiction, and several of the reviewers highlight that. You really have to take that into consideration as you're reading this piece from Gilbert. This is not so much something that is written where she's had time, significant time to fully process. You can see the rawness. Maybe even, you know, that self-indulgence one reviewer says, if you're not reading this through the lens of Gilbert an addicted asshole, you are probably going to miss the point of it. Because Gilbert makes the point that in addiction, you, you don't behave as your, your true self. She highlights that for her partner Raya, whose journey and regression back into addiction is highlighted throughout the majority of the book, at least the kind of middle to the end and. You know, she makes a point that when someone is in their addiction, they behave like an asshole. And so knowing that Elizabeth Gilbert then highlights her own love and sex addiction throughout the story, and especially more so focused after Raya dies, then this reviewer is making that point that, okay, she's writing this only. You know, five years after the fact, and we gotta give her a little bit of grace. There are plenty of people that praised her for the rawness and the vulnerability and the way that she's shed light on this love and sex addiction that most people don't talk about. And it's something that I think a lot of women, especially. May find themselves, um, relating to, and to some degree or another, that concept of codependency where you are, you're, you're getting something out of being there in the service of others. Now, the way Gilbert explains it, it's quite extreme. I mean, she lavish her lovers with all sorts of, you know, monetary gifts and turns her world upside down for them. So she presents, you know. The addiction side of this concept, but I think a, a lot of readers can probably see ways in which they exhibit some of these characteristics, even if it doesn't go all the way towards an addiction that they need to resolve. But certainly, I, as I read it, I was like, oh yeah, I know. I can see how in the past I behaved in a more codependent way, um, than I do now where it was. My life was a little bit more focused on pleasing the people around me in order to provide that sense of external safety instead of finding that internal sense of peace and safety. But I just wanted to share a couple of those quotes with you guys before we jumped in to these, these three areas. So structure, this book is written in a linear narrative with a flash forward at the beginning, which is standard for a linear narrative structure to kind of start the story like way far ahead and then, and then go back in history. Um, as I read though, I really wondered if a thematic structure wouldn't be more suitable. For this story because Elizabeth Gilbert has these several big themes. I mean, she's got the drug addiction, she's got the love and sex addiction and its history with her past relationships. Um. Then this whole concept of just the death and and dying as her partner Raya is, has terminal cancer and is, you know, living out the last bit of her life. The reason I wondered about this is because. What I saw were some red flags that may indicate that a different structure might be helpful. Something that I look for when I'm helping other memoir writers figure out their structure. It's very common to start with a linear narrative. It, it's what makes sense in our brains because that's how our life happened. But as far as translating to a reader, what I noticed was. As a reader, I struggled to hold onto all the threads of all these different themes that Gilbert was introducing and talking about, and two, she had to provide a lot of backstory in order to catch the reader up on where she kind of left us in the Eat, pray, love memoir versus where we are now with her in this one, and I don't. One, that backstory wasn't necessary. And two, several times within this book, at least three or four times, she specifically tells the reader, I'm not going to actually tell you the details of how this relationship ended or how this relationship started, or the times I cheated on this person. Um, she really brushes over a lot of things she's not ready to discuss, and that's her prerogative as a memoirist. That's certainly something that. We all have to protect what parts we're gonna share about ourselves. However, if you find yourself saying that that many times, and it's all in these backstory pieces, the problem is what you present to the reader is sort of this wall. Like I felt a wall between myself and the version of Elizabeth Gilbert I was trying to experience on the page because she kept telling me that she wasn't gonna give me any of this. Really any depth of background, even though she was having to present some backstory from a just narrative timeline standpoint to catch us up to where she is for present day. That's really why I think a thematic structure might've been more beneficial to her for telling this story because. There's just so many different themes at play and she doesn't wanna go into the backstory. So if you as a memoir writer are struggling with the same thing where you ha feel like you have to present some backstory, but it's kind of sensitive topics that you aren't the subject of this particular memoir, not something you plan to go into, really consider whether a linear narrative structure is the right one for you. There's so many other options. Um, I teach eight different structures within the memoir master plan cohort. Um, thematic is one of those that would help a writer avoid having to do all that backstory. The other thing I wanna highlight about the structure of this book that I think just did not quite work for me, as I mentioned a little bit earlier, is that jump between memoir where we're in the moment with her, where, you know, she paints this beautiful picture of. This old church that she's renovated into a home, and, and sometimes I just found myself really engrossed into the scene. Oh, she's also got this other beautiful one where she's describing this party and they're in a limo with Raya and these people and, and she's nervous about how Re's gonna be able to relate to this group. But Raya breaks the ice with a funny comment and you get to see how she, as her character shines. Whereas chapter two of the book is just like, I don't know, a diatribe listing of all of re's traits. It's, it's. Absolutely all telling and no showing. Whereas I feel like that one scene in the limo did so much more service to showing us who Raya was and how like electric and vibrant she was, how easily she could relate to other people, how sort of self-deprecating she would be in order to break the ice. That was so much more significant and helpful than just. That, that telling chapter early on about who Raya is with, you know, kind of the more surface level descriptions. It's those chapters where she, where Gilbert goes towards just the telling or feels like she's trying to curate the readers. Takeaways and perspective I felt as a reader, like my interpretation was constantly being managed by Gilbert, where she oftentimes was telling me how I needed to feel about something, which is not appropriate for memoir, and maybe shows still some lingering areas of codependency that she struggles with because I felt like as a reader. Gilbert was trying to convince me that she's made the right choices, that she's justified in this, that we can understand and agree with her, and you're not always gonna agree with someone in memoir and as the writer of the memoir, you have to be okay with that. You have to be okay with the fact that some people are gonna think you're an asshole and some people are gonna think you did exactly the right thing. And there's beauty in that. Like that's not something to run from, to control. Uh, I did this, I I, in my initial version of my memoir, I wrote a memoir, self-help combo, but I noticed when I was editing that those self-help chapters where I switch the lens and put the, the light, the spotlight back on the reader of like. Telling them how they need to interpret what this is or how I'm justified. Like Gilbert would have these chapters kind of explaining addiction recovery to the reader and what what's allowable sort of within addiction and what's normal within addiction. To try and maybe normalize some of those behaviors, help the reader understand who may not be familiar with some of those addiction models or recovery models. But I really, as a reader just felt like I was being managed. Um, and I know I'm not the only one because some other, other reviewers. I highlighted this same concept one on good read said it is almost as is as though the writer doesn't quite trust the reader with her story alone, and must also explain in great detail how the story should be interpreted. That is a common pitfall from memoir writers because we are putting some of our most vulnerable parts of ourselves out there, so it's understandable that just human nature we want. Those who read our story to not judge us so harshly, we want them to understand us and understand why we made the decisions that we made. But when it comes to a level of controlling how the reader is going to filter the information that you're giving them, it was, it did feel like Gilbert didn't trust me to simply. Believe her, or just take what she's saying on face value. And you know, maybe I agree. Maybe I don't agree. She's, I got the sense that Gilbert, as the writer of this. Did not feel comfortable with me reading her story and coming to any conclusion outside of, oh, well, she did what she had to do and she was in addiction as well. So all of this makes sense because of her addiction, and now she's got a clean slate and she's working to making it better. Like she didn't really leave any other alternative. Even though she admits to, you know, predating the murder of Raya, even though she admits to, you know, some, some pretty big stuff. And that's okay. You know, like I, I, I'm reading the memoir because I want to see an experience outside of my own. I want to. If you've done a good job, you know, live in that world for a minute so I can decide if that's a world I ever want to embody or not. And there's so much beauty in that, right? Like our, that's why our stories don't have to be all flowers and sunshine. There's, there's value in showing the parts of ourselves that others may judge pretty harshly. And, but not controlling that. And that's where I think she took. A lot of the self-help chapters a bit too far. That's where I think the poetry is really just over the top. No one in the reviews that I read enjoyed or valued the sketchings or the poetry. I found myself as I was reading of the book, really just skimming over those parts. They didn't add anything to the depth of my understanding of where Gilbert was in the moment. I couldn't really even tell whether they were chronologically linked with that time that she is outlining in the story or if she just like threw them in after the fact. It doesn't always seem to reflect. Where we are in the narrative. So again, it kind of throws me off as a reader and takes me outta that narrative moment that she really paints so beautifully. I wanna stay in the narrative with her. I don't wanna be jerked out. So keep that in mind in your own writing as well. Like if you're putting in external things, like I've got journal entries that are going into my memoir. I know other memoirs who have put in poetry, who have put in song lyrics. Art of various forms, as long as it furthers and deepens the reader's understanding of where you as the character are in that moment. That's great. We love to see that multimedia aspect that's, it's exciting for our brains, but if it's something like this where it's not really informing the reader on any extra depth of emotionality, it really just feels extra. So keep that in mind if you're making any of those considerations in your own writing. Next I wanna talk about the core message. So the core message that I took away from this book is the way that Gilbert talks about Earth School, where we come here onto earth as souls. We've pre kind of. Decided what sort of journey we're gonna have, what struggles we're gonna take on, what roles we're gonna play in other people's lives. And while there's some level of buy-in, I could give to the basic concept of reframing our struggles in this world as lessons we can learn. There's a little bit of like. Oh, well I behaved like this with this person because in some previous, you know, universe I existed in, that's what I signed up to do. It seems a little bit like brush under the rug. Um, and she uses this overarching metaphor of the map of New York City. And the distance from Manhattan to the river as, uh, euphemism for death as Raya is moving throughout her life and towards the river all the way to the river, meaning Raya is asking her to St. Walk beside her, all the way up into her death. And sure, this core message. It does run through the length of the book. At times it gets a little lost. The metaphor gets a little messy. Um, but it's just not, I, I didn't see the level of transformation that I expect to see when a writer. Is identifying a core message. What I help writers do is talk about what is that like major shift that you make. Right? So Elizabeth Gilbert is someone who has already come to this conclusion about struggles as lessons. We already saw that in Eat, pray, love, we already saw her a transformation of sorts there. Granted, we know that at the end of that book, she then goes back and repeats this whole. Love addiction cycle where she throws herself back into another relationship after having just left one. And so we maybe the reader kind of wonders is she really learning her lesson, but this whole concept of, you know, these struggles is lessons. I didn't see any major transformation in her on that topic. She certainly came to understand. Addiction differently. You know, initially she is an observer of re's addiction and her relapse, and then after her death comes to terms with her own love and sex addiction. But I, memoir is really so powerful at capturing transformation and I, I just don't, didn't experience that. This memoir. Now, part of the question could be, was she ready to write this story? And there are a couple of indicators that maybe she wasn't in the sense of, this is a beautiful story. There is some, some richness here. There's value in sharing this story, but she may still be a little too close to it. For one, the skipping over all the backstory, the details she doesn't want to go into, um, uh. Then having not being able to really show a big transformation. She admits she's only five years into her recovery journey, and that's basically like reaching kindergarten as far as recovery is concerned. She admits that, but I've had that question come in from, you know, a podcast listener about doing an episode of When are you ready to Write your story? And there's certainly some, some red flags that I see within this book to indicate to me that maybe Gilbert wasn't ready. I constantly noted I was taking notes on my phone as I read. I constantly noted that like. Where is Gilbert in this, where why She's telling me how Raya feels about dying. How does Gilbert feel about Raya dying? Like Raya iss all excited to kind of go out with a bang and live it big and, you know, savor these last six months, quote unquote, that she has to live. Although she ends up living for over a year after that point, I, there was so many moments where I felt like we got. Almost Reye's memoir through Gilbert's memory, almost as like a ghost writer. But I kept feeling like Gilbert was hiding herself, like she wasn't showing me where she was emotionally. I was constantly shaking my head in frustration at not being able to. See where she was at. She wasn't telling me any of her feelings, any of her thoughts. There were just so many times that I was really frustrated by that. I'm gonna pull up my note real quick, um, just to, to highlight. Um, and I, I just. Okay, so like I said, the second chapter is all about Raya, where she like outlines the Raya is Syrian. Raya grew up in Michigan. At the very end, she dips into relationship struggles, but there's so little of Gilbert on the page, even the first chapter. Oh, the first chapter, um, I know this is where Stephanie had her issues because she reached out to me as she read the first chapter and was like, I doubt I can get into this book in the first chapter. This is this flashback, right? Where, or the flash forward, sorry, where, you know, Reye's Energy comes to her and then goes on this like expletive filled rant about how she needs to write this story, and, and it was, it's all about Raya. It wasn't about. Gilbert and I, I, I constantly struggled to find where she was on the page. Um, and I, I, I struggled over and over again with the fact that. I really felt like Gilbert wasn't willing to go there yet. And that's okay. This only happened five years ago, but I'm saying that to say maybe it wasn't time to write this story yet. And if you find yourself also holding back with the emotions, with the feelings, with the thoughts that you are experiencing and you're, you're focusing just kind of on the what's happening. Then maybe you too are not ready to share that particular story, and that's okay. Some of that takes a lot of time and some perspective shifts. Oh, here's a great example. So at sort of like the peak of ray's. Um, regression back into her addiction. Their Gilbert's bought them, got leased them an apartment, really expensive apartment. And then she finds out that her bank account has been hacked and all this money is missing and taken, and she's about to lose his apartment and her lease is about to be up and she's going to have to figure out how to move Raya and where they're gonna go. And she tells us this, she tells us this as a reader. That this is all happening, but she never says what kind of impact that's having on her. Like how are you feeling this stress in your body? Like she talks about how she calls the FBI and she does this and that, and it's maybe like a paragraph or two about this incident, and then it's over and done with. And that was something that. I mean, I don't know. I can't believe that just celebrity status alone made you like, allowed you to ride through that wave without stress to where it could just be like, oh, and then there was this incident and all my money got taken, but it's okay. You know? So I wanted to know like, gosh, that sounds really scary at a really difficult time in this journey. And the reader is not let in. To know how Gilbert's feeling about any of this or even what sort of visceral impact it's having on her body. The stress, I mean, she's already like not sleeping. She's already having to go and get drugs for raya, the drop of a hat and get clean needles and, and all of this. And that's what I mean when I say she just doesn't really let us in as the reader. Um, which that is a nice bridge over to the relatability because she, that's one of my key things about the, the lack of relatability of this story is that she doesn't let the reader in. Um, I think because she doesn't let the reader in and she's talking from the perspective of a bestselling author who is able to just buy all these things, afford all these things, it does. Come off as be as being really kind of self-indulgent and just that she's on a totally different level than her reader, and it's very difficult to relate to her plight. I really think if she would've dug into the emotion, I as a reader could have related to at least the emotion, even though I can't relate to. You know, a million dollars suddenly disappearing from my bank account. I can relate to the stress of the sudden financial concern. I mean, I, I remember when I was younger and I, I bounced a check and it was like terrifying. So if she had put in some emotion of what she was feeling in that moment, maybe it would've helped me. Recall that previous experience I had in the emotions around it, and then I would've felt like I could relate to her better. But because she doesn't give the reader any sort of emotion and feeling to root ourselves in and relate to her on, I just, I can't relate. Like I, I'm not buying, you know, millions of dollars of drugs. I'm not, you know. Helping an addict shoot up on a regular basis, like it's, it's really hard to relate to the story, um, because she doesn't give these emotional and feeling benchmarks and places to really root into. This is a big deal when you're writing memoir, so as you're writing, you wanna make sure. That you're putting in the emotion, which is emotion is what you're feeling in your body, the way your body's reacting, and then also the feeling, the way that you're then interpreting those sensations within your body because you can have. Different, like your eyes could water, right? But that could mean a couple of different things to you depending on how you interpret that. So you would tell the reader like, oh, this thing my, I felt my eyes start to water. Well, then also tell us what, how you interpreted that, what we're what that feeling, what feeling that evoked for you. Because that's how we as readers are going to be able to relate to your story, even though we haven't lived through the thing. Same things that you have, we've experienced some of those same emotions. We've experienced some of those same feelings, and that's what we're gonna be connecting with. So when. Or if you as a writer, shy away from those feelings and those emotions, you don't give the reader anything to relate to you on. And that's what I think Gilbert did here. I'm actually kind of surprised that her editors did not push her to do more. I don't know if that's a kind of a side effect of a previously bestselling author. I don't think that a new author, if this was like a first time. Author would be allowed to publish without lack of emotionality, um, that I read within this book. To be honest, I think Gilbert gets away with it because of her name and because they know they're gonna sell this book based off of her name alone. Um, uh. I know my editor has not let me get away with any moments, not even any singular moments where I'm telling, you know, my reader about something and I'm not just totally opening up my heart to tell you what I'm feeling, what I'm thinking, the emotions that are happening in that moment. So it's hard for me to imagine that Elizabeth Gilbert's editors did not push back on this, but hey, say Lavie. Oh, I just looked down at my notes and I, I wrote down a, one of the. Reviews that said, is Gilbert so successful a writer, that editors are reluctant to give her notes? Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what I felt as I was reading. I was like, where are her editors in this? Like I get that she's hesitant to go here, but she's chosen to write, write this story, and she's not really doing it justice in the sense of allowing the reader to relate to her in this if she's not willing to go to that depth. Um. I, I appreciated this reflection from a different reviewer that said that this is a memoir about two deeply troubled women manipulating each other until one dies. And the other writes a book about it. Um, that's a bit harsh, but I totally see where that reader is coming from. There's, there's a lot of control and. Manipulation at play, and I feel even as the reader like Gilbert is trying to manipulate and control my perspective of her story, even another reviewer said that they felt led, like she needed my approval as a reader instead of letting me dislike her or not agree with her. Maybe an indication of her continued codependence in some ways. I had a hard time, um, because of the lack of emotional insight, being able to pull any personal life lessons from reading this memoir. One of the reasons I love working with memoir, I love reading memoir is because I almost always am able to see aspects of myself, aspects of my past experience that I'm able to reframe, that I come to a different sense about through reading about other people's experiences and stories, and I really didn't have that with this. I. My only sort of enjoyment, quote unquote, which is not quite the right word, um, with this book was simply watching the collapse of everything. Like it was, as the one reviewer put it, engrossing. Like you can't, I couldn't stop myself from turning the page just to see what in the world was gonna happen next because it just got so outta hand. But I was not emotionally connected to. Any character in the story. I couldn't see myself in hardly any of this, even though I am engaged to someone who was addicted to drugs for a decade now, as long as I've known him, he's been in recovery. So I'm also familiar with the recovery spaces. I am also been sober for the last four years, so. Even though I have some loose familiarity with the topics of addiction and relationships and, and all of that, I still struggle to relate to the story. And I, I can't say this enough, it's, I know it's because Gilbert kept a wall up so many times in allowing us as the readers to see her emotions and her feelings. So I really caution you if you are a writer of memoir, if you are not able to go there, that's okay. You're just not ready to write that story yet. Write in a journal what you can put it to the side and work on other projects until you're ready to actually do that story justice, meaning you're willing to go there. You're willing to show those emotions even when you know that it's something that someone may judge you for. I've got sections of my book that I am like, whew. That was really hard to write, and I know there are gonna be people that absolutely disagree with me and think all kinds of things about me because of what I've written here and because of even how I interpreted it and my feelings around it. And that's okay because there are gonna be other people who absolutely relate to it. Because I went there because I put the emotions on the page because I shared what I was feeling. That's, that's memoir guys. That's what it is. It's, it's beautiful and it's hard. And it's vulnerable, but that's what makes it so good. So, gosh, what would I say? Uh, I can't imagine this being a book that I recommend to people to read for memoir. I don't even think it's a great non-example in the sense that. I think for most people it might be a little difficult to parse out what really, what parts work and what doesn't work. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think this is, was a, was a great one from Gilbert. I would recommend read Big Magic instead, especially as a writer if you're gonna dig into her work. Um. So, yeah, that's, that's what I have to say about all the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilbert. Please share your comments, send us a message. Let us know what you thought, how you felt about it. Um, I did get a message from one of our regular listeners and readers of our email newsletter, and she shared some of these similar things as well. So shout out to Brandy who sent us an email from as a response to, uh, emails newsletter I had sent out about doing this book. She read this book last month and she said that she felt the addiction and decline of Gilbert's Friend's Health went on for too long toward the end chapters. And she thought that Gilbert could have written more about herself, could not agree more. Um, she would recommend the book to others. And she said, as a great writer, Gilbert has succinct, relatable ways to describe concepts. So again, there's kind of a, a range of where people landed, uh, with this book. Um, and I'd love to hear if you read it, what you thought. And just leave us a comment. Also, if you're not on our email list there, that's a whole different experience. We put so much love and vulnerability and insight into those emails. You can join our list and get those as well. Thank you for listening. Happy writing.