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You might think I would get my fill of the emotional, dramatic, sometimes troubling details of other people’s lives from the 17 or so Dear Prudence letters I answer each week. You’d be wrong. My appetite for this kind of content means I’m obsessed with memoirs, particularly those by women who have lived through or done bad things. So when this excerpt of Elizabeth Gilbert’s new book, All the Way to the River , was published, I couldn’t turn away, even though it felt like the consensus reaction was “Oh, no.”

Don’t get me wrong. I immediately understood where the concerned and critical responses to this book came from. Gilbert tells the story of the choices sh

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