Review: Vivien Horler

All the Way to the River – Love, loss and liberation, by Elizabeth Gilbert (Bloomsbury Publishing)

All the Way to the River is the third memoir of Elizabeth Gilbert’s I’ve read. The first was Eat Pray Love, a bestseller which made her fortune. It famously starred Julia Roberts in the film version.

The second was Committed – A love story, and was a sequel to the first. At the end of Eat Pray Love Gilbert meets a Brazilian, and the pair agree to a committed relationship, but not to marry, since both have been divorced and don’t want to go through that again. But the US government steps in, saying if they don’t marry, the Brazilian will not be allowed to return to the US. And so they do.

All the Way to the River is another love story, of sorts. It’s also about addiction, and beating it – or not.

This time the object of Gilbert’s devotion is Rayya Elias, a Syrian-born hairdresser, musician, filmmaker and force of nature.

Rayya is finally clean after being a junkie and often homeless in Detroit and New York City, addicted to everything you can think of including heroin, cocaine and various prescription drugs. Rayya becomes the love of Gilbert’s life.

Rayya is not well, suffering from hepatitis C, often a precursor to liver and pancreatic cancer. And indeed, this is what eventually kills her. But before she dies, she goes back to serious drugs via alcohol – her tipple of choice is entire bottles of Angostura bitters (44% proof) – and the couple go through a truly terrible time, terrible to the point that Gilbert actually contemplates murdering Rayya. Instead, she leaves her.

But it turns out Rayya is not the only addict in the house. Gilbert admits to being a sex and love addict. She’s also partial to alcohol and drugs.

She writes: “… my addiction manifests as a sincere yet deeply misguided belief that somebody outside of myself will miraculously be able to heal me on the inside – thereby making me feel safe, cherished and whole at last. In real-life terms, this translates as a desperate need to have my existence constantly authenticated and reauthenticated through a romantic partner’s touch, eye contact, verbal reassurance, acts of love, or mere physical presence.

“How much reassurance is enough for me to finally feel secure?

“There has never been enough, frankly.”

She says this desperation to be loved has caused her to act in “ways that are undeniably insane”. Sex is the fastest way for her to feel chosen. She uses other people the way other users use drugs, and like them, her relationships with her “drugs” always end in tears, or worse.

“I have inserted myself into other people’s relationships, and I have broken up families; I have lied to myself and others; I have hurt people whom I promised to cherish; … I have cheated on people and allowed myself to be cheated upon; … I have tried to buy love with money…”

She is explaining this because she doesn’t want readers to think she is judging Rayya. “What she was, I also am. My addictions may have manifested differently from hers, but we both suffered from the same deep spiritual sickness.”

This may not be the book for you – it is not a pretty read. Much of it wasn’t the book for me either. It describes a rollercoaster of love, obsession, abuse, pain and – towards the end – some redemption.

It ends with Rayya dead, and Gilbert joining a 12-step programme, slowly gaining control of her life. Like the other two Gilbert memoirs I’ve read, by the final pages Gilbert seems to be heading for the sunlit uplands, but then she also seemed to be doing that in the other two memoirs, and we know how those stories turned out.

It’s an extraordinary glimpse into the lives of a pair of addicts and, if anything, it’s left me feeling grateful for my own life – and its ordinariness.