Pleasure Read. Ch. 18-36

Liz explained what God meant to her. She started to pray after her divorce with her husband. Gilbert describes in detail some of her new Italian friends. Gilbert try to find only pleasure in Italy but she decided to forget about sex for 1 year for variety of personal reasons. She continued to learn Italian, the language of pleasure, and even attended a college. Attraversiamo, a pedestrian term meaning “let’s cross over” is her favorite new Italian word. She also visited Augusteum and enjoyed travelling here. Gilbert and her friend Sophie take a day trip to Naples—the city responsible for giving the world pizza and ice cream.

In Italy she discovered that she could be happy without David, and that was why she wrote him a good buy- letter. Catherine, Gilbert’s older, practical, organized, fearless sister, comes to visit her in Italy. Despite the fact that they were sisters, they were completely different.

In her last week in Italy, she travels to Sicily.  Finally, she noted that Italy was not a country for her. “I do know that I have collected myself of late—through the enjoyment of harmless pleasures—into somebody much more intact.  The easiest…way to say it is that I have put on weight.  I exist more now than I did four months ago.  I will leave Italy noticeably bigger than when I arrived here.  And I will leave with the hope that the expansion of one person—the magnification of one life—is indeed an act of worth in this world.”