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Once upon a time in the annals of women's stories, getting married was the fairy-tale ending. These days, marital ambivalence rules the literary scene. December brought Julie Powell's new memoir, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat and Obsession (Little, Brown; 307 pages), in which the Julie & Julia author tells the sad, sordid tale of the recent years she spent butchering pigs, cows and her husband's heart. Meanwhile, in a New York Times Magazine story, writer Elizabeth Weil detailed her efforts to subject her "perfect union" to every kind of therapeutic scrutiny available in Northern California. Her goal of complete marital introspection — needed or otherwise — inspired heated holiday-party conversations and terror at the thought of the memoir to follow, as well as giving single women everywhere a new appreciation of their unburdened ring fingers.

Elizabeth Gilbert does these reluctant wives one better. The author of Eat, Pray, Love returns with Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage (Viking; 285 pages), in which she is a vehemently wary second-time bride, due to be dragged down the aisle by Uncle Sam's immigration henchmen, who will otherwise toss her beloved, Brazilian-born "Felipe," as she calls the older man she met in the last section of EPL, out of the U.S. for good. They hadn't planned to marry. Like Gilbert, Felipe had endured a hard divorce, and they were content to be "lifers" together. But a helpful Homeland Security officer prescribes marriage as the only certain way out of Felipe's immigration dilemma, and the couple agree that they love each other enough to do it.

Gilbert cites statistics, scientific studies and her painful experience with her first marriage — the impetus for the worldwide spiritual ramble of EPL — as her reasons for not wanting to tie the knot. She demonstrates how the institution threatens her independence and the well-being of many women. Her fears hold up even when she's considering union with a man who loves her, excuses her memoirist tendencies and has been known to tell her that the curves of her body "look like sand dunes."

But whereas in Eat, Pray, Love the journey was what mattered, the end of Committed is, as of page 18, a foregone conclusion. As Gilbert puts it, she and her lover are "sentenced to marry." This makes the book a supreme act of navel-gazing, even for a memoir. While the legal complexities are being worked out, the two kill time by traveling together. Along the way, Gilbert, ever the good journalist, gathers string on marriage and love from various sources, including the humble Hmong women of North Vietnam, seagulls, a humble frog-farming family in Laos and her humble 96-year-old Grandma Maude back in Minnesota. (Gilbert practices humility with vigor, even when sweetly patronizing Third World cultures.) Her process is exhaustive, and the results are exhausting, though some of her points are astute. This slog through one woman's relationship angst feels, in the end, like much ado about nothing.

Gilbert is a highly conversational writer — a blessing if you are in the memoir business. Four years after its publication, Eat, Pray, Love remains on the New York Times best-seller list, giving its author a chance, with the likely sales of this new book, to become the Malcolm Gladwell of soul-searching. Gilbert left her loyalists believing that a year of spiritual questing would end with peace, love and the address of the best pizzeria in Naples. There could be no doubt that her readers wanted more. She and Felipe had gone off into the sunset; could she now describe the rosy glow?

But Committed — and to a certain extent, Powell's Cleaving — demonstrates the curse of the conversational writer. I confess to having found EPL tedious at times and to struggling with the fortuitous arrival of true love at the end of Gilbert's year of self-discovery. (In Committed, she pokes fun at herself, quoting her sister Catherine's response to her gushy e-mails from Bali: "Yeah, I was planning to go to a tropical island this weekend with my Brazilian lover, too ... but then there was all that traffic.") There was no denying, however, that she was a vibrant woman on a cool adventure, with stories to tell. The pressure to return to that fertile ground must have been enormous. Just as she was sentenced to marrying, she was sentenced to sequel writing.

Committed gives us a woman trapped in a command performance she's too smart not to be dubious about. She seems self-conscious about the need to remain everyone's best friend, littering her prose with chirpy asides ("Listen, I want to make it clear here that I am not intrinsically against passion. Mercy, no!") and cutesy interjections ("Just a little free advice there, from your Auntie Liz"). Then there are the apologies for anything that might offend. Her eloquent defense of gay marriage, for instance, is diminished by this chatty advisory: "You see where I'm heading with this, right? Or rather, you see where history is heading with this? What I mean to say is, you won't be surprised, will you, if I now take a few minutes to discuss the subject of same-sex marriage?"

Gilbert also repeats, incessantly, information she's already conveyed, whether it be the vastness of the belly of a pregnant woman she's dining with or the details of a coat — wine-colored, with a fur collar — once owned by her grandmother. (We hear about its beauty four times in three pages.) There are useful insights into the dilemma of modern marriage here, but the overall effect of the heavily padded Committed is like that of being called, over and over, by a friend who wants to talk your ear off about her impending nuptials. Only instead of debating the floral arrangements, she's wondering, Should I really be taking the leap? Halfway through Committed, I wanted to put the phone down and walk away, leaving Gilbert to figure it out on her own.How to Butcher a Marriage
It would be much harder to hang up on Powell. She makes no apologies and no effort to be likable in Cleaving, a ghastly work of revelation without enough self-reflection. Soon after wrapping up Julie & Julia, Powell began cheating on the kindly Eric, that husband who dutifully ate her butter-soaked Julia Child meals for a year. Her lover and S&M partner was Damian, a former college fling with "Mick Jagger lips, and a weak chin." I am saddened that I have a clearer vision of Damian's masturbatory methods than of his actual appeal, and sadder still at the mental images Powell provides of herself tied up, awaiting his next "R-owwr." (Since when is talking like Austin Powers sexy?) This recipe for marital disaster comes with scattered recipes you'd hesitate to trust, given the horrific disorder of Powell's upstairs kitchen.

Cleaving is, however, a much livelier book than Committed, in the way that your narcissistic pal is more riveting than your earnest, loyal girlfriend. Powell's interest in butchery is genuine, and the passages set during her internship at Fleisher's, an upstate New York butcher shop, bristle with clarity. That's not to say the intended metaphor — that as she learns to butcher, she's also exploring the anatomy of her tumultuous love life — is clear or convincing, largely because her journey feels so incomplete.

What is fascinating is the impact of previous writing successes on these pages. In one heartbreakingly venal passage, Powell thrills at Damian's audacity in pretending to be Eric for an eager reader who recognizes her on the street. The honesty of the admission doesn't cleanse the implied disrespect for those — from the real Eric to her fans — who adore her. Powell was also sentenced to sequel, although her amply demonstrated lack of humility suggests she was happier to comply than Gilbert. But when she runs out of story — the Fleisher's internship complete — she copies earlier Gilbert, setting forth on a haphazard journey around the world. Her "Eat, Sulk, Stew" wraps up with a return to the husband she belittled and betrayed. Now here is a marriage to be debated. Maybe one of Weil's therapists could lend a hand.

Both books feel rushed into print. Cleaving begs for better boundaries and structure; the ladylike Committed is too confined to feel truly intimate. Gilbert overshares only in the department of exclamation points, and if you want to know what life postsunset is like, be advised: she takes us only to the altar. But these two writers share more than just marital ambivalence. It may be difficult to work up sympathy for best-selling authors who end up portrayed on the big screen by the likes of Amy Adams and Julia Roberts. (EPL the movie is scheduled for release this year.) Yet these women have been caged by the expectations of voracious publishers and readers. Their escape methods are different — Powell appears to be chewing her own leg off, Gilbert gently boring her captors into letting her go — but it's hard not to empathize with someone in a trap, even one built on success.

• MARY POLS
• Elizabeth Gilbert, author of 'Eat, Pray, Love,' has a new memoir, 'Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage,' that takes her reluctantly to the altar