Cleaving
Julie Powell thought cooking her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking was the craziest thing she'd ever do--until she embarked on the voyage recounted in her new memoir, CLEAVING.Her marriage challenged by an insane, irresistible love affair, Julie decides to leave town and immerse herself in a new obsession: butchery. She finds her way to Fleischer's, a butcher shop where she buries herself in the details of food. She learns how to break down a side of beef and French a rack of ribs--tough, physical work that only sometimes distracts her from thoughts of afternoon trysts.The camaraderie at Fleischer's leads Julie to search out fellow butchers around the world--from South America to Europe to Africa . At the end of her odyssey, she has learned a new art and perhaps even mastered her unruly heart.
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Very dark and honest and I still don't think she's a literary genius, but I found I wanted to hear the next thing she had to say. Skippable if you're only interested in the butchering part.
Through most of this book I thought I hated it. But I was wrong. The writing is strong, the story is strong (if unpleasant), and Julie....not strong so much and maybe just a touch psychotic. I will have nightmares of her in butcher whites with a scimitar trying to pack me in ice so she can harvest my kidneys.
This book has received a lot of 1's and 2's and I was well on my way to giving the book the same till I realized the book is really well written and tells a strong story even if Julie's own life is pretty F***ed up.
My only hope is that Robert, the dog, comes out of all this without being scarred.
This book had so much potential. Julie Powell's first memoir, Julie and Julia, was a book that I absolutely adored. The movie version was even fairly well done. When I heard that she'd written a second book, I was thrilled! When I saw the fairly epic subtitle (A story of marriage, meat, and obsession) my hopes for this book grew to epic proportions.
Sadly, it fell flat.
The first part of the book wasn't so bad. In fact, the parts where Julie talked about butchering and how she apprenticed at a quaint shop were absolutely fascinating. Those parts left me actually wanting to experience what she did. I don't know that I actually wanted to butcher any meat... but I certainly wanted to watch.
But the primary focus of the book was the affair that Julie had with “D.” The vast majority of the book was filled with insipid whining about the fact that he had decided he could no longer be with her because she was married and it was too hard for them to have a relationship when she was still so attached.
She whined about the loss of her lover. She whined about the strain on her marriage (she carried this affair on for two years while her husband knew about it).
Once she moved on from talking about her apprenticeship, I quickly grew bored and actually put the book down for a few weeks because I simply couldn't stomach the whining any longer.
Bottom line? The title and subtitle are far more entertaining and well written than the rest of the book.
