Elizabeth Gilbert, best known for her memoir “Eat Pray Love,” has revealed a far darker side of her life in her new autobiographical volume, “All the Way to the River: Love, Loss, and Liberation.” The book, released Sept. 9, has sparked a storm of publicity and some stark headlines such as “Sex, Drugs and a Murder Plot: Elizabeth Gilbert Has ‘No Shame’ About Any of It,” “Elizabeth Gilbert: ‘I came very close to murdering my partner,’” and “‘Eat, Pray, Love’ author Elizabeth Gilbert reveals shock life of drugs, obsession — and contemplating murder.”
In her third memoir, Gilbert, who since “Eat Pray Love” became an inspiration to 1.2 million Instagram followers, recounts her relationship with Rayya Elias, a longtime friend who later became her partner and who died of cancer in 2018. At the lowest point of their time together — when Elias, a recovering addict, returned to alcohol and drugs and Gilbert became her enabler — the writer makes an astonishing confession: she considered killing her lover.
“It can happen to anybody,” says Norair Khachatryan, assistant teaching professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University. “Anybody can be driven under the right circumstances, or really wrong circumstances, to think about murder.”
