TONIGHT: Elizabeth Gilbert at the Brookline Booksmith

Journalist and short-story writer ELIZABETH GILBERT had it all — a cool career, a husband, and a nice house in the ’burbs — but she wanted none of it. Following a nasty divorce and a mind-numbing period of depression, Gilbert went to Italy and stuffed herself with the finest food and wine she could find. Then she moved on to an ashram in Mumbai for endless hours of meditation. Finally to Bali, where she studied with a medicine man and let things get hot and heavy with a new guy. It’s all chronicled in Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman’s Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia. Gilbert has written quirky pieces about cowboy saloons and her search for the Last American Man. In her writing about herself, however, her prose becomes truly irresistible. She’s at Brookline Booksmith, 279 Harvard St, Brookline | 7 pm | free | 617.566.6660.