real life

A new Australian book seeks to cast doubt on claims made in Eat Pray Love.

The first wife of Eat Pray Love author Elizabeth Gilbert’s husband has released a memoir of her own.

Elizabeth Gilbert met Brazilian Australian Jose Nunes in Bali, and wrote about their relationship and eventual marriage in her second book, Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage.

Four years later, Nunes’ first wife, Elizabeth Lowrie, has decided to set the record straight in a new book entitled Committed Undone. 

Just to be clear: they are both named Elizabeth, and they have both been married to Jose Nunes, and now they have both written a book called Committed.

Committed: The Original.

Lowrie’s self-published memoir is a public rebuttal of suggestions made in Gilbert’s books that the marriage between Nunes and Lowrie was unhappy and the divorce messy.

Eat, Pray, Make Love: “Why you absolutely must have shameless sex after your divorce.”

She describes their no-fault divorce in the ACT court as ‘smooth as creamy milk’, and maintains her husband was never denied access to their two children, and was never asked for on-going child support.

Lowrie tried but failed to elicit a public apology from Gilbert and Nunes for the way they portrayed the divorce after the publication of Committed (Gilbert’s version, not Lowrie’s. Geez, this is getting confusing). She and Nunes have not spoken since.

Elizabeth Lowrie.

In response to accusations that she is jealous of Nunes’ new relationship, Lowrie makes it clear that she is not. At all. In any way.

Why would you even think that? It’s not like she wrote an entire book of the same name as his new wife’s bestseller to expose the lies within.

“My divorce was some 14 years ago – I could hardly be jealous. I wish the couple no harm, I just want my voice heard,” she says. “And you know a very small part of the  book clarifies my personal divorce history – around four chapters in all.”

Just four.

Lowrie has dedicated her book to “all the women who work hard to make their divorces gracious”.

 What do you make of Lowrie’s claims?