Whitcoulls Recommends: Fulfillment and All the Way to the River

Fulfillment by Lee Cole. Two half brothers lead very different lives. When they converge on their mother’s home in rural Kentucky, the rivalry between them intensifies with potentially terrifying consequences. This is a story about class, privilege, family, brotherhood and ordinary people living ordinary, messy lives - and what it takes to find fulfilment.

All the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilbert - who is of course the author of the bestselling Eat, Pray, Love. This is another deeply personal story, about her relationship with Rayya Elias - which was one of co-dependence, serious addictions and a spiral of self destruction. Rayya was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and after her death Elizabeth shone a spotlight on their affair and managed to recover through a determined adherence to a 12 step programme. It’s a really brave book, harrowing at times and ultimately fascinating. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
Ab Joan mackenzie, good morning, Good morning. Tell me about
Fulfillment by Lee Cole.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
It's a book about families, and you know, the dynamics
and families are often so interesting, which is the case
with this one, which is the story of two half brothers,
one of whom is very successful. He's an academic in
New York City, recently married to a young woman and
things are going pretty well, and his brother is he's
less secure of his place in the world. He works

(00:39):
in fulfillment centers. I'm thinking the kind of place that
Amazon has. And they meet up at their mother's house
in Kentucky, where the sibling hostilities and rivalries really come
to the fore. And so you've got the successful one
with the wife, and you've got the less successful guy

(01:00):
who really doesn't know what he wants to do. Well.
He does, actually, he wants to become a screenwriter, except
he's never actually written the screenplay, and he comes under
a lot of criticism from his half brother because he's
not successful. Meantime, there's this relatively new wife hovering in
the background and the dynamics between the brothers and the
wife really start to come to a head and potentially

(01:22):
with quite devastating consequences. So it's a book about families
and brotherhood and the sibling rivalry. There's a bit about
class on there, but really what I thought was that
it's about ordinary people living really ordinary, messy lives, as
we all do, and they're so interesting to read about.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
Absolutely something we can relate to. Somebody else who's had
a really interesting life is Elizabeth Gilbert.

Speaker 3 (01:45):
She certainly has now. She'll be known to a lot
of listeners for her book Eat, Pray, Love, which was
one of the biggest selling memoirs of all time. I
think since then she's had what might be called a
troubled and somewhat tormented life. She's published a couple of novels.
But this is another memoir and it is quite extraordinary.
It's the story of how she was married. She had

(02:06):
a friend, a woman who she met who was actually
her hairdresser in the East Village in New York City,
and they started up a friendship. The friend's name was Raya,
and they became very very close, and eventually Elizabeth left
her husband and they moved in together and became lovers,
and soon after that, Raya was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer
and became very unwell. But the central theme of the

(02:28):
book is about addiction. Raya was hopelessly addicted to everything
that was going and Elizabeth is unflinching in her description
of how she was addicted to sex and love and
had the most extraordinary path towards this particular relationship, and
they spiraled into this extraordinary self destruction which nearly killed

(02:49):
both of them. Eventually, Raya died of her cancer, but
the story about the drugs that she was taking up
until that point is extraordinary, and Elizabeth eventually found her
way to a twelve step recovery program and is now
what she calls sober and doing very well. It's a
very interesting memoir, autobiography story of somebody who's prepared to

(03:12):
put nearly everything on the line to tell you about
how things meant so dangerously wrong for them. But I
also really do believe that for anybody who's struggling with
any kind of addiction, they would find a lot in
this book to give them hope and comfort and some
kind of understanding.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
I don't want to sound flippant here, But I thought
that Eat, Pray Love was all about sort of finding
yourself and finding peace and all this kind of thing.
And it feels like.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
She's been striving for that her whole life. And towards
the end of this book, she talks about how as
a child she had real trauma and that trauma has
haunted her throughout her adult life and she's been looking
for a better way all of those years, and towards
the end of the book she finally manages to reconcile
that child and that inner person that she's been traveling

(04:04):
with all this time to get to her a happier place. Well,
it's very brave.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, that's amazing that she's opened up so much about it.
Thank you so much, Joan. It sounds fascinating. It's All
the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilbert. The first
book we spoke about was Fulfillment by Lee Cole. Will
talk next week.

Speaker 3 (04:19):
See you then.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to News Talks it B from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.