All the Way to the River feels empty because what Elizabeth Gilbert describes is ‘liquid love’ marketed and packaged as ‘solid love.’

My dearest incurable humanist,

Elizabeth Gilbert published her new memoir, All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation, in September. I have been a Gilbert follower for years. I was not necessarily her number 1 fan, or her most avid reader, but I enjoyed Eat Pray Love and especially Big Magic. Her captivating storytelling and inspirational outlook make for a soothing read. Yet, I cannot say the same for All the Way to the River.

I was a little hesitant to publish this since I tend to write about things I like, in my so-called critiques. But I am taking a leap and sharing my most honest opinion. Take it with a grain of salt. Agree or disagree, this is a space where debate is encouraged. So … Oh boy, here we go.

When it came out, I started reading online reviews, some praising the book, like Oprah’s book club. Others were merciless, like The New Yorker and The New York Times. Even among my friends, I found opposite views. Not sure whether or not I was going to like it, I jumped in, clueless about the moral introspection I was going to find myself having.

The book begins with Gilbert waking up on her 54th birthday, realizing that her partner, Rayya, is in the bedroom with her. She then tells us that Rayya had been dead for over five years. In the ‘conversation,’ the women reminisce about the relationship, Rayya consoles Gilbert, tells her about the afterlife, and how she will wait for her in the river. What follows borders on delusion, with Rayya allegedly giving her carte blanche to tell their story. Gilbert repeats that she is now sober, aiming to establish that this hallucination is not a result of any substance consumption.

The book then continues on how, after the Eat, Pray Love success, Gilbert found herself immensely wealthy and throwing money away. She paid for her friend’s bills, bought them gifts, and even gave money to small business owners after the 2008 financial crash. Amid this squandering, she hired Rayya, a “hot queer hairdresser” as her hair and makeup person for her book tour, encouraged her to write a memoir instead of paying rent and moved her into a New Jersey church that Gilbert had impulsively bought originally intended as a home with her second husband (whom she’d met during her Eat, Pray, Love year.) During the tour, Gilbert told a stranger that the only reason Rayya wasn’t her partner was because she was married and had to be ‘good.’ Meanwhile, Rayya, who was a recovering alcohol and heroin addict, had started to drink openly again. In 2016, Rayya was diagnosed with liver and pancreatic cancer with only six months to live. Gilbert immediately ended her marriage and confessed her love. She proceeded to rent Rayya a penthouse and showered her with expensive gifts, including a Range Rover, a piano, and a Rolex. They gorged on “food, sex, travel, pleasure.” Gilbert describes them as “ecstatic, phosphorescent, dangerous, brilliant, and full of wild courage.” They were writing poems about each other and staying awake all night.

In the beginning, Rayya refused chemotherapy, but her friends eventually convinced her to try it. The combination of the illness and treatment became exhausting. Rayya decided she needed hourly opiates and massive amounts of cocaine, which Gilbert paid for and procured. Gilbert became what she describes as a “twisted bedside nurse,” even tying off Rayya’s arms, who had already outlived her prognosis by nine months. As the situation spiraled, Gilbert told herself Rayya was the most beautiful thing that had ever happened to her. But eventually she lost faith and decided to murder Rayya (literally!) by switching her morphine pills with sleeping pills and covering her in fentanyl patches. Nevertheless, Rayya survived. This moment made Gilbert realize she’d hit rock bottom. She identified herself as a sex-and-love addict, an addict in general. Gilbert stopped being Rayya’s enabler and called friends for help. Rayya fell into another woman’s care and managed to get sober. The two reconciled. When Gilbert confessed to the murder plot, Rayya called it “fucking awesome,” exclaiming, “You found your darkness, dude!” Soon after, Rayya died. Gilbert began rebuilding herself. She wrote her novel City of Girls in just six months, did psychedelics, debauched on her sex-and-love addiction, then went to recovery meetings and got clean. By the end of the memoir, she’d been sober for five years. She’d tried to apply a sober mindset to her finances and stop “saving other people’s lives.” If she dates again, it’ll be according to a deliberate “sober dating plan”. Gilbert acknowledges that she’s always walking on the precipice, using the language of recovery.

I am aware that this is Gilbert’s story and believe she has every right to tell it however she sees fit. I genuinely respect her sobriety and can only imagine the pain and courage that must entail. Yet, there are several things I fundamentally disagree with. I have been deeply grieving for almost four years now, so around the same timeline, Gilbert had been grieving at the beginning of her book. Her take on grief feels acted and calculated. Rayya shows up to praise her sobriety, console her, and, most importantly, give her blessing for the book. The apparition tells Gilbert exactly what she needs to hear to write without guilt. Real grief is messier. Real grief includes doubt, anger, and regret. When my father passed, I would have conversations with him in my head, sure. But those conversations included me yelling, crying uncontrollably, and changing my mind about what I thought he’d want. Gilbert’s apparition scene does not have that ambiguity. Grieving makes us do crazy things, and we turn to the most unbelievable resources, psychics, priests, prayers, or whatever might comfort us. I do think we might encounter signs, like a song our loved one used to like, or a feather, or a name. But to condone everything she writes later about the deceased based on the claim that she allowed her through this so-called apparition is frankly disrespectful to the reader’s intellect and own grieving journey. Gilbert sets herself up as a guru of some sort, for her experience with Rayya’s passing, yet just because you lose someone, you don’t automatically gain spiritual authority.

The book kept making me uneasy beyond the obvious yet I couldn’t decipher what it was, until I remembered the concept of ‘solid love’ and ‘liquid love’ by Polish–British sociologist and philosopher Zygmunt Bauman. He described ‘liquid love’ as a form of modern love characterized by its fragility and superficiality. It is likened to a liquid because it flows and is not retained. Love that is based on fragile sentimental bonds that can easily break. This type of love lacks commitment. Relationships tend to be short-lived or disposable, satisfying momentary needs for affection or support but leaving emotional dissatisfaction or emptiness afterward. In contrast, ‘solid love’ represents a committed, enduring, and deeper form of love that acts as an anchor in times of emotional turmoil. It is based on commitment, faithfulness, and the decision to maintain the relationship through ups and downs. This love is steady like a solid foundation or rock, providing stability and trust beyond fleeting emotions.

And then it hit me. All the Way to the River ultimately feels empty because what Gilbert describes is ‘liquid love’ marketed and packaged as ‘solid love.’ She portrays her relationship with Rayya as her true soulmate, her true love, her ultimate romance. Throughout the story, she talks about how much they loved each other, and in that apparition scene, we are led to believe that even though they had their disagreements, the basis was love. Nevertheless, the rest of the book suggests otherwise with striking examples. Gilbert’s lack of commitment to her husband is the first red flag. She falls in love with Rayya but doesn’t act on it because she’s “trying to be good.” This is liquid love’s hallmark: relationships maintained only until something better comes along. She was already emotionally unfaithful, confessing she wished she could be with Rayya. The marriage was an inconvenience she was waiting to discard. The moment Rayya receives a terminal diagnosis, Gilbert immediately ends the marriage. Another example is her indifference to Rayya’s relapse. When she starts openly drinking again, Gilbert’s response is to keep her close and employed. If Gilbert truly loved Rayya in any solid way, watching her relapse would’ve been devastating. Moreover, the timing of her confession, only after the six-month terminal diagnosis, reveals the transactional nature of liquid love. She commits when there’s a built-in expiration date and a great plot for her next book. Doing drugs with Rayya is where liquid love’s emptiness becomes undeniable. Gilbert confuses mutual self-destruction with intimacy. And the grand finale, the murder attempt.

Our world is saturated with fleeting TikToks, trends that last a week, and three-word texts. But we cannot let this culture of disposability dictate our approach to love. Whether you find your anchor in religion, psychology, philosophy, or something else entirely, the goal should be to build something enduring. This is why All the Way to the River fails. Gilbert pushes her story to be something so profound when, in reality, it reads as shallow. She asks the reader to admire a six-month intensity binge that ended in attempted murder as if it were the same as decades of devotion. In doing so, she diminishes the grief of those who have truly lost solid love. Life is full of changes and challenges, and solid love is built for that. We deserve stories that show us the difference, not ones that disguise drowning with sailing.

Curious to read your thoughts.

Until next week.

(Read by the author. Theme song, The Incurable Humanist, by Carlos Escalona Cruz. All Rights Reserved 2025.)