Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession

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Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession

2.35 of 5 stars 2.35 · rating details · 2,760 ratings · 824 reviews

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 Fleische...more

Hardcover, 303 pages

Published December 1st 2009 by Little, Brown and Company (first published 2009)

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Jan 19, 2010 Ciara rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: autobio-memoir, read-in-2010

i hated this book. i read julie & julia &, you know, i didn't think julie powell was the next shakespeare or anything, but she managed to pull together a better book than most bloggers-turned-authors out there. i was engaged with the story. i enjoyed the prose in an auto-pilot brain kind of way. i figured this book would be more of the same--philosophical insights about her personal life shared through a prism of foodie-ness. & i guess that's what it was, but it was also unspeakably...more i hated this book. i read julie & julia &, you know, i didn't think julie powell was the next shakespeare or anything, but she managed to pull together a better book than most bloggers-turned-authors out there. i was engaged with the story. i enjoyed the prose in an auto-pilot brain kind of way. i figured this book would be more of the same--philosophical insights about her personal life shared through a prism of foodie-ness. & i guess that's what it was, but it was also unspeakably horrible.

what's going on in her personal life here is that she has started an affair with some lame-seeming dude who she already had one affair with in college. it doesn't sound like the dude is much to write home about in the looks or personality departments, but julie thinks the sex they have is really hot. everyone should have at least one sexual partner in their life that can provide them with really hot times, & if that involves a little S&M action, i'm not here to judge. but most of us learn by the time we are julie's age (or far, far younger) that those sex hijinks are not for public consumption! i've had my share of good times, but i don't kid myself that anyone wants to read a book about them! i definitely DID NOT want to read a book about julie powell's douchebaggy lover leaving bruises all over her body while she observes his left-handed jacking off methods.

let me just say that at one point, julie writes very specifically about searching for the one image of her lover that is available on the internet (this is after he wised up, realized that she is batshit crazy, & cut her completely out of his life). it's his facebook default profile picture, in which he is wearing a "ben sherman shirt" that she had purchased for him. this brings me to another aspect of the book that i hated: julie dropping little references like that into the text like it's supposed to help us relate to her. when i think of ben sherman shirts, i think of dudes who are just as big of douchebags as dudes who wear ed hardy, but they prefer a somewhat preppier plaid button-down look to the ed hardy surfer schlub style. i don't think of hot sexxxin'.

another example is when julie writes about the guy who runs the butershop where she apprentices. apparently he has a great big ironic mustache & a t-shirt that says, "guns don't kill people, people with mustaches kill people." hilarious. oh wait. we all know about threadless, dude. & aren't ironic t-shirts a little circa 2000? the saddest part of all is that julie found this dumbass t-shirt amusing enough to include it in her PUBLISHED MEMOIR, which is sure to linger on library sale shelves long after the author herself stops finding ironic mustache humor the cutting edge of comedy.

& ALSO on this note is julie's non-stop obsession with "buffy, the vampire slayer". now, i know it's a popular TV show...i just don't think JULIE knows it's a popular TV show. the way she writes about it, you'd think it was this really edgy cult discovery she'd made because she is just right there, balanced on the precipice of the cutting edge. she liberally sprinkles buffy quotes throughout the book, to do big things like describing her entire basic life philosophy. it all strikes me as very sad. when people use cultural touchstones in such a lazy, self-absorbed way...i can't help it, it screams stupidity to me. julie powell did not seem stupid in her first book, & perhaps it's even too strong a term to use here. but i at least walked away from the first book thinking she'd be a laugh at a dinner party. i walked away from this one thinking she'd be a dullard. she really should have walked away with one book under her belt...or taken more time to make sure her follow-up wasn't just a sloppy, self-centered rush job designed to capitalize on the success of the "julie & julia" film.

okay, so...she's having this affair. of course her husband finds out, because, as she incessantly tells us, they are likes two halves of a whole, they seem to share a mind, blah blah. i gotta feel for eric if THIS is the mind he's sharing. then again, i guess it gives him plenty of room to stretch out. he begins his own affair, but i guess the sex isn't as hot because he ends it after a while. he wants julie to end her affair as well, but she seems to be on some kind of self-destructive, sex-obsessed warpath & won't do it. plus she's always sneaking into the bathroom to surrptitiously check for messages from her lover on her blackberry, even though she knows her husband knows her passwords & occasionally reads her messages. which isn't cool of him, but it's not like she's not giving him reason to be suspicious, you know?

basically, instead of sounding like a couple that is so much in love that they can stick it out even through these kinds of betrayals, they sound like a couple of fucked up, alcoholic assholes who are spinning themselves a fantasy that maybe they would have outgrown by now if they hadn't started dating when they were teenagers. they seem to still have a bullshit teenage perception of what it means to be "in love". mark my words, these two will be divorced within three years.

julie's obsessive relationship with her lover is emblematic of her relationship with men in general. when she's at the butchershop, her whole bag is trying to be one of the boys, listening to their gross, sexist jokes & telling gross, sexist jokes of her own to show how unaffected she is. when she goes on her ridiculous butchery world tour (way to rip off eat pray love ), her whole bag is trying to be as attractive to as many men as possible. & supposedly it works. apparently all of the men in argentina are just fascinated with her, & it never seems to occur to her that maybe they are just interested in getting some tail & are not actually all that taken with HER particular womanly gifts. she makes out with a maasai warrior in africa, & we are treated to a good 25 pages of some other dude on the african tour attempting to sexually assault her in her tent while she wussily fought back, castigated herself for being a wuss, castigated herself for not yelling for help, castigated herself for telling people about it the next day, castigated herself for probably getting the dude fired, & so on. it was like fifty years of fucked up responses to sexual assault, boiled down into one person's recollection of a single experience that lasted maybe twelve hours (from time of attempted to assault to getting her phone back & leaving the site). it was kind of sickening.

& all of this is mixed with hackneyed metaphors involving butchery, & more information that i ever needed about how to chop up various animal parts. the food aspects of julie & julia were certainly present, but i don't remember them being so heavy on the technical detail & relentlessly dull. maybe she just had lightning in a bottle with that first book, & she tried to re-capture the dynamic with this second book & everything came out clunky. i feel bad for the editor. i feel bad for any of her family or friends who tries to read this book. i feel bad for julie & any of her loved ones that read these reader reviews. but dear god, if she does read them, i hope she learns something. i hope she grows the fuck up, gets some counseling for her self-esteem issues (really? you wore boots & a skirt in new york city & no man could take his eyes off you for the entire day? a) i doubt that. b) why do you care so much? you are a PUBLISHED AUTHOR whose debut memoir was turned into a blockbuster movie starring two A-list hollywood actresses. doesn't that trump some greasy asshole in washington square checking out your ass? he'd be doing it if you were wearing sweatpants, trust me!) & alcoholism (two bottles of wine a night, alone? that is scary. the guys at the liquor store have nicknamed your favorite brand after you? problematic), & takes more time to truly craft her next book. maybe she actually is a decent author. or maybe julie & julia was a fluke.(less)

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Oct 07, 2010 CC rated it 1 of 5 stars

Oh boy. The essence of Julie Powell's new book centers around her two year affair with a sleazy, unattractive loser she knew from college (her husband Eric knows and instead of taking a stand that she end it, just makes passive-aggressive quips about it).

Between all the obsession, there's an alternating story about Julie as she learns the art of butchering. The two stories have virtually nothing to do with each other and I suspect the butchery was just thrown in as some sort of an attempt at a n...more

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Jan 29, 2010 Jamie rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: adult, just-for-fun, memoir

I haven't read or seen Julie and Julia. So I had no opinion on Julie Powell one way or another, except that I think the casting of Amy Adams probably means to an extent at least she was a bit of a sweetheart.

So, to me, the first half of this audio deserves 5 stars. To follow up your momsy bestseller with a book in which you juxtapose butchery and buggery deserves my applause. She is FEARLESS in talking about her desire for rough sex, her extramarital affair, and her obsessions. As well as talkin...more

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Feb 23, 2010 Jennifer rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010

After reading Cleaving, I can't decide if this is a memoir from the James Frey school of memoirs (i.e. details and events are so outrageous as to seem more fictional than not) or if Julie Powell is actually telling the truth and therefore needs some serious serious mental health help.

This really isn't the story of Powell learning to butcher. Instead, it's the story of Powell's trainwreck marriage and personal life, which is so gruesome that you *want* to look away, but you just *can't*. After a...more

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Jan 04, 2010 Lisa rated it 2 of 5 stars

I'll give Julie Powell one thing: She's brave. She's incredibly flawed and puts everything out there in this book. And I do mean everything. I guess there's such a thing as airing too much of your dirty laundry! I won't be spoiling anything by telling you this, since it's all revealed early in the book, but Julie -- who wrote lovingly about her marriage in her first book, Julie & Julia, does an abrupt about face in this book. It's a real shocker, this one. After she got famous, her life fell...more

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Oct 22, 2009 Carin rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: food-books, memoir, women-authors

It has been a long time since I read Julie & Julia (although I saw the movie much more recently). I was confused about people who'd read the book more recently talking about how Julie was unlikable. But I can get that. I don't readmemoirs about people I want to be friends with - I'm fine with them being slightly unpleasant since I won't have to deal with them once I'm done with the book. Ms. Powell is very self-centered, obsessive, and it's uncomofrtable watching how she hurts her husband an...more

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Dec 02, 2012 Irena Smith rated it 1 of 5 stars

I have one word to say about this book: TMI. Picked it up because I was absolutely charmed by Julie's spontaneous, totally profane, utterly engaging voice and madcap humor (and indifferent attention to, um, kitchen cleanliness) in Julie & Julia. I was hoping to find more of the same in Cleaving, but nooooo.... apparently, such is the sense of false intimacy fostered by blogs that in this book Julie decides we want to know EVERYTHING about her personal life. Not just the cooking, not just the...more

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Apr 14, 2013 Danielle rated it 4 of 5 stars

Stop ranting about the evils of Julie Powell. I've been reading a lot of horrible reviews of this book, and I can't help but think these readers are just barking up the wrong tree. Either these people loved the quaint life promoted in Julie & Julia too much, they take literary achievement too seriously, or they just plain have no experience to relate to. If you have never lost an important relationship in your life due to your own destructive nature, keep scrolling down the reading list. You...more Stop ranting about the evils of Julie Powell. I've been reading a lot of horrible reviews of this book, and I can't help but think these readers are just barking up the wrong tree. Either these people loved the quaint life promoted in Julie & Julia too much, they take literary achievement too seriously, or they just plain have no experience to relate to. If you have never lost an important relationship in your life due to your own destructive nature, keep scrolling down the reading list. You will not understand this woman's predicament. Not many of us understand why she chose to grandstand it in a book, but I totally empathized with her experience entirely. If your own life has turned from perfect to gritty, you will either sympathize or empathize while learning something along the way.

We are brought into her life rather suddenly amidst an affair that she's having against the loyal husband we recall from her first book, julie&julia, and she's already aware of her downward spiral. So she entertains us by becoming a butcher's apprentice, weaving her education of breaking down meat into the unravelling of her personal life. For some, both of these accounts unsettle the stomach, and to you I say too bad. This is how life works. People cheat and you eat hamburgers, well, lets talk about how both of those things happened.

The story of Julie 's life is troublesome and awkward, but avoid the arrogance of thinking that we don't deserve on some level the horrid relationship experiences that we all endure. A relationship falling apart is never an even scale and is never entirely tipped to one side, either. One person may do something drastic but they had your help getting there. Either a person is enabled or pushed away. i learned about this book in 2009 when I could feel my life pulling at its seams but I had just enough energy to keep it together. I knew that "cleaving" would be the seam ripper i was afraid of. I wanted nothing to do with it. It was only this year, after that seam finally ripped entirely anyway, that i decided to pick it up. I'm really glad I did.

If you've ever felt like you deserved to die, you'll feel normal reading this. If your life has never been touched by the darkness that is hurting those you love, skip it, because we don't need you feeling better than the rest of us.(less)

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Sep 06, 2012 Jamie Langes rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Raw and Oddly Engaging...

So many people have reviewed this book and thought it was horrid. I have an alternative perspective and it's actually a book I have read several times (I like Julie & Julia too, but this book is not in the same vein, so if you are looking for the Julie in that book, she's not here in Cleaving).

Perhaps on purpose (and I may be giving too much credit to the author & editors), but this book is very raw. It's about butchering, yes, but the storyline offers a look at...more

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May 16, 2010 La Petite Américaine rated it 2 of 5 stars Recommends it for: Chicks who need to get a divorce.

Shelves: auto-bios-etc, sucked, food, rants

Look.

Let's be honest here.

No one likes Julie Powell.

We all bought her first book because of the lovable giant that is Julia Child and the story of a promising culinary project. We had enough of those pleasant distractions to kindly ignore the loudmouth attention-whore Julie Powell, despite the fact that she was running around the background screaming "Look at me! Look at me, damn you!!" (What do you want to bet she was a theater major?)

The problem is, her followup gives us none of the positi...more

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Jan 03, 2010 Heather rated it 2 of 5 stars

this book made me furious. i read julie & julia and liked it well enough, although i felt like there was no strong resolution of the narrative like you need - even in a memoir. then i saw the movie and like most people thought meryl streep was amazing and julie was eh.

after some thought i decided this was because julie powell is fundamentally a little bit unlikeable. i think they cast perky amy adams in it to try to counter that quality she has, but to no avail. she's just got enough of a w...more

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Jul 01, 2011 Kristiana rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2011, at-work, memoir

Julie Powell does a good job as writing herself as the antihero of her story. I thought the story was going to be more about butchery than about a marriage and an affair. My mistake. While the butchery portions of the story are interesting the rest of the book is just sad. I assumed the story would be self involved and demoralizing, but it was a little more of all of that than I had anticipated.

Butchery = interesting
World travels = not as interesting
Destructive behavior and marriage = sad.

Towar...more

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Jun 29, 2011 Danielle rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: wow-that-is-a-bargain, memoir, non-fiction, plaza-midwood-library, animals, betrayal, city-life, cooking, marriage, sex

The cover of Cleaving reminds the reader that the book is written by Julie Powell, the author of the NY Times best-seller Julie & Julia, which is now a major motion picture. I do not feel that I am going out on a limb when I say that I doubt anyone will be making any major motion pictures out of Cleaving. In her second memoir, Ms. Powell (and I use that prefix for reasons abundantly clear to anyone else who felt somewhat unsatisfied by the lack of resolution of a certain major plot point) ha...more The cover of Cleaving reminds the reader that the book is written by Julie Powell, the author of the NY Times best-seller Julie & Julia, which is now a major motion picture. I do not feel that I am going out on a limb when I say that I doubt anyone will be making any major motion pictures out of Cleaving. In her second memoir, Ms. Powell (and I use that prefix for reasons abundantly clear to anyone else who felt somewhat unsatisfied by the lack of resolution of a certain major plot point) has strayed, not only from her marriage, but also from her broadly appealing style. [return]Skimming the previous reviews, I see that many readers were put off by the occasionally graphic descriptions of butchery and the less-than-accepting tone Powell takes towards vegetarians. While I can see how this would be aversive to some, I have to wonder exactly what these folks were expecting. Even a cursory glance at the synopsis on the inside flap tells you that our protagonist will be elbow deep in ex-living things, and there is a definite pro-butcher vibe. So while the food aspect does narrow her audience, I was not a problem for me. I expected it and I appreciate the excellent description Cleaving provided.[return]That being said, the side of Cleaving that deals with Powell's emotional life and relationships I found to be downright infuriating. She comes off a callous, lacking remorse, and occasionally downright creepy. There were moments when I yearned for a description of bovine anatomy just to be able to stop hearing about her personal life. I realize that since Cleaving is a memoir the story is based on reality, but I find it hard to believe that all the redeeming features that the author had during her Julie & Julia project, the ones that made me root for her even when she was acting a little selfish or crazy, have magically disappeared. If not, then she certainly failed to inject them into this work. [return]Was Cleaving a bad book? No. Was it a disappointment as a follow up to Julie & Julia? A little. Will I read another food/life memoir if Julie Powell writes one? Yes, but I hope it is food-heavy.(less)

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Jan 20, 2013 Kristi Ingram rated it 3 of 5 stars

A story where someone pursues their dreams is always interesting to me. However, when it is at the gross expense of another, I will usually discard it.
Julie Powell, author of the successful Julie and Julia novel, shares here another adventure, this one seeped in adultery, guilt, desire, and redemption.
Although this story is about pursuing a dream, a new life, a soul fulfilling adventure, it is at the expense of another. But, the other, Julie's husband, is disaffected. Hardly invested. We must r...more

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Oct 23, 2012 Rachel Brown rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: did-not-finish, food, memoir

A memoir on butchery and, alas, an extra-marital affair, by the author of Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. (Loved the original blog. Did not love the book adaptation, which lost all the charm and humor of the blog’s food-writing in a morass of uninteresting memoir.)

I did not get very far into this book, so I’m only giving my impressions of what I did manage to read before giving up. Julie gets interested in butchery and becomes a butcher’s apprentice. Meanwhile, she’s having an a...more

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Mar 28, 2012 Marsha rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: memoir, cooking-food-wine, travel

Julie Powell is not the same darling girl she was in “Julie & Julia”. She’s succumbed to the slight manic-depression that plagues the women in her family. She’s taken and lost a lover. She and Eric engage into bitter fights or, worse, moody, fearful silences. She’s taken up butchery.

Here is a woman struggling to come to terms with her warring impulses, sexuality and questing spirit. The reading gets painful, at times extraordinarily so and Ms. Powell doesn’t spare herself or the readers as...more

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Jan 27, 2012 Mindy Danylak rated it 1 of 5 stars

Shelves: not-worth-it

julie powell rose to fame when the book she wrote from her cooking blog was turned into a movie. we all saw and loved "julie & julia." including me. amy adams & meryl streep were unforgettable and their characters were charming. however, the movie did not tell the story of julie's marriage well. this book is where she tells that story. julie turns to butchery as her next exploration in who she is and essentially hacks her marriage to death at the same time, leaving both animal carcasses...more

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Dec 28, 2011 Barry Graham rated it 4 of 5 stars

I'm surprised at how good this book is. I couldn't get through Julie Powell's first book, Julie and Julia. I only liked the film because of the parts that are about Julia Child, and because of Meryl Streep's performance. I found the Powell character irritating and boring.

Her second book, which has gotten some scathing reviews and many personal attacks on its author, promised more of the same. Fortunately, it breaks that promise.

It's another memoir. This time, unable to stop being unfaithful to h...more I'm surprised at how good this book is. I couldn't get through Julie Powell's first book, Julie and Julia. I only liked the film because of the parts that are about Julia Child, and because of Meryl Streep's performance. I found the Powell character irritating and boring.

Her second book, which has gotten some scathing reviews and many personal attacks on its author, promised more of the same. Fortunately, it breaks that promise.

It's another memoir. This time, unable to stop being unfaithful to her husband, Powell tries to distract herself by learning the art of butchery. She gets an unpaid apprenticeship at a butcher shop run by people she calls "meat hippies." She forms intimate friendships with her bosses and colleagues, and she learns how an animal's flesh gets from the farm to the kitchen table. When her lover refuses to see her, she has a series of anonymous sexual encounters, while hoping to hold her marriage together.

This could have been self-indulgent or turgid or gimmicky, or all three. But there is little about this book that isn't good. Powell knows how to write narrative, and, however painful or shameful her confessions, she never slips into narcissism. Whether she's describing butchering an animal, making dinner, stalking her ex-lover or having bad sex with an unattractive stranger, she writes with honesty and wit that makes the reader care. It goes on slightly too long, losing some momentum, but not to the point of becoming dull.

Unlike its predecessor, this a serious book, not an exercise in attention-seeking. Powell emerges as a decent person trying to figure out how to live, and as a writer of depth and nuance who may have great books ahead of her.

Something that doesn't seem to occur to Powell, though, is that she isn't the problem. What's causing all the pain and confusion is an unquestioning acceptance that monogamy is a virtue. Powell clearly loves her husband; indeed, she finds life without him unthinkable. She doesn't seem to mind when he has an affair, since it doesn't make her doubt that he loves her and wants to be married to her. She just doesn't seem to be a sexually monogamous person, and I can't see that there would be any problem were it not for the (perhaps self-imposed) expectation that she should be, or should be perceived to be.
(less)

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Dec 17, 2011 Ocean rated it 1 of 5 stars

gah! i listened to the audio version of this book while i was going through a bad patch mentally and needed something, anything, to distract me from my thoughts while at work. i don't know WHY i thought this book would make me feel any better, but i'd heard that it was bad and i kinda love bad media.
but. oh. my. god. i didn't know what i was in for. let's mix in gruesome tales of cutting up animals with jerky butchers with tales of being a jerk to someone who loves you! sounds great!
i had a ki...more

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Aug 05, 2011 Melanie rated it 3 of 5 stars

If you can get past all the butchery meat metaphors and cheesy references to “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”, you are left with a book about the author’s affairs (oh and some random travel stories and recipes are included too..). So, she talks about cheating on her husband, her obsession with her lover and random one night stands, but I never really understood why she butchers her marriage. It was hard to understand why she wrote the book- seems like she never really shares why she cheats (marriage i...more

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Jul 30, 2011 Rebecca rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: chicklit

Follow up to Julie and Julia. And while I wasn't a big fan of that book, this book was even more blah. This book was more personal and like, why do we care? You aren't famous, but you think you are. Turns out the marriage in the first book wasn't all happy-go-lucky as the author made is seem. In this book she is in the middle of an affair with an old friend, yet still married to the husband. He knows, but since they have been together so long, neither really want to get a divorce, even though bo...more

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Jan 04, 2011 Agatha rated it 1 of 5 stars

Pelt this book with rotten tomatoes: it stinks!
This is a total flop from the author of JULIE AND JULIA. I truly believe she is
an undiagnosed manic-depressive, narcissistic, insecure alcoholic, but, on top
of that, she has zero morals, is an atheist, and has no compunction about either
one of those either. I'm not just being a prude here: she cheats on her husband
(he knows, cuz, you know, that makes it ok? crazy) with another guy for 2 years;
then, when that guy cannot take her anymore, scours the I...more

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Sep 13, 2010 Stephen added it

To Julie's Editor: DO YOUR FUCKING JOB!

To Julie's Publisher: All future Powell books will be returned unsold, so don't bother. She was clearly a one-hit wonder.

To the douchebag men who want to bang slutbag Julie: Just run and avoid this hot mess.

To Julie: You had so much potential and you absolutely, positively blew it. Your immature little brain just couldn't help itself and you let your truly sickening view of stranger fucking weigh more heavily in your book (not to mention your life and yo...more

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Sep 07, 2010 Brianne rated it 1 of 5 stars

This book was horrible from the beginning. After absolutely adoring Julie & Julia, I thought this would have the quirkiness that I loved about our Julie Powell. What I got was a woman who felt no moral issues about having an affair right under her husbands nose. She tore into meat, never came home, and broke her husband's heart. But even that wasn't the worst offense of this book.

After her first book, it almost seemed as though she didn't write that one. The writing in this book was horrid....more

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Jul 11, 2010 Meg rated it 1 of 5 stars

May we (I speak for the collective of goodreads here) puh-lease add a "negative" star rating, simply and exclusively for Cleaving? Please! If I could give it less I would, but I will settle for a mere "didn't like it" when indeed I hated it. Why did I finish it? I'm embarrassed to say I was rooting for the husband in the end. I was hoping against hope that he would man up and leave this egotistical, manic depressive, selfish, negative, attention seeking slut I used to call a good writer. How cou...more

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Jun 09, 2010 Jlaurenmc rated it 3 of 5 stars

My brother is a vegan, and after reading Julie Powell's latest book Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, I must say I've now given it some thought. All that talk about meat in its original state turned my stomach. I mean, I find it difficult to eat chicken or beef that I've cooked, just remembering it so recently in its raw bloodiness. So I haven't given up on my eggs, milk, & cheese quite yet, but meat is the furthest thing from something I'm craving at the moment.

Cleaving is...more My brother is a vegan, and after reading Julie Powell's latest book Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, I must say I've now given it some thought. All that talk about meat in its original state turned my stomach. I mean, I find it difficult to eat chicken or beef that I've cooked, just remembering it so recently in its raw bloodiness. So I haven't given up on my eggs, milk, & cheese quite yet, but meat is the furthest thing from something I'm craving at the moment.

Cleaving is the story of Powell's journey to self-destruction, beginning just after her bestselling novel Julie and Julia was released and made into a major motion picture of the same name. Despite her new found fame and fortune, Powell remained desperately unhappy with herself and with her life. Her first attempt at finding a purpose in life was starting the blog that begat Julie and Julia. But even that success happiness did not make. Her second attempt at finding herself? Beginning an affair with an old college boyfriend and current mutual friend of hers and her husband Eric's. Known mainly as "D" in the novel, he represents to Powell a place she simply can't get to -- satisfaction. After their affair ends badly, Powell continues her downward spiral, all in the name of "finding herself." There is the ongoing stalker-style text message & email assault she continues on D, coupled with the constant emotional distancing from her husband.

Powell realizes a new obsession -- becoming a butcher. Conveniently, the only butcher shop willing to allow her an apprenticeship is more than two hours from her home in the city. Thus, Powell is forced to rent an apartment far away from her husband, so that she can learn the rapidly-dying art of butchery. When she finishes the apprenticeship, she then embarks on an around-the-world journey to various meat-centric cultures: the big-beef industry in Argentina, sausage-making in Kiev, and goat-roasting in Tanzania. All of this training and traveling really amounts to one thing -- a geographic distance from her husband, which is more effective than the emotional wall she has been building for months.

The most interesting parts of Powell's novel involve people other than herself. I found myself fascinated with the family-like team at Fleisher's Grass-Fed and Organic Meats in upstate New York. They were an eclectic bunch I would read and enjoy a book about, sans Powell. Also interesting to me was Powell's husband Eric. What drives this man to stick by his woman's side, through thick and thin, good times and bad? That's a book I would like to read. Likewise, some of the best parts of the novel are during Powell's world tour of meat. She meets intriguing individuals whose stories could have filled tomes rather than chapters. Of course, most interesting to me was Powell's trip to Tanzania, where my brother and sister-in-law and baby nephew currently reside. Although Powell went nowhere near their small town of Geita, she did visit Arusha and safari through the Serengeti. I devoured every word of her experiences in East Africa, even the bad ones (and there are some).

All I can think is that Powell must be much more likeable in person than she comes across in the pages of this memoir. Rather than the self-deprecating character of Julie and Julia, the Powell of Cleaving comes across as self-loathing. She likes herself so little, it only makes sense that the reader also finds it difficult to empathize with her. But the people in her life hang on to her, making me believe that there is something within Powell to love. After all, Eric hangs around for more punishment; her family seems to enjoy spending time with her; the butcher team seems to have a genuine affection for her; and she's able to make friends the world round. If only some of that innate human-ness were present in this memoir, it might be more enjoyable for everyone. (less)

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May 27, 2010 Alena rated it 1 of 5 stars

This is the problem with getting most of my books from the library. I walk in without a specific book in mind, browse around, think "why not?" and end up with a disaster.

I'm not a huge fan of Julie Powell anyway. So, she cooked her way through a cookbook. So, since when is that remarkable? There was a time, in our not-too-distant past, when folks used cookbooks on a regular basis. This was considered normal.

BUT. This is neither here nor there.

I had some hopes for "Cleaving" because I thought...more

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May 13, 2010 Jessica L rated it 1 of 5 stars

Seriously, this book made me wanted to poke an eye out with Julie Powell's butcher knife. OK, maybe that's a slight exaggeration, but it's not far off. I was so excited to buy this book after enjoying "Julie and Julia." I like food, I like food lit; it would make sense that I'd love this book, right? I finished "Cleaving" knowing that Julie Powell is without a doubt the most narcissistic butcher in the greater New York area. I'm not sure what drives one to write a memoir based on her desperate,...more

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Apr 19, 2010 Mandi Kaye Ottaway rated it 2 of 5 stars

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 qua...more

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Apr 14, 2010 Patrice Fitzgerald rated it 1 of 5 stars Recommends it for: no one

I confess that I only read about a third of it, and that in the bookstore. And I am so glad that I did that instead of spending money on this book!

I came here (and just checked out the reviews on Amazon) because when I first looked at the contents of "Cleaving," I was positive that it would do poorly, and that most folks would hate it. Not that I wanted that for Julie Powell -- I enjoyed her first book quite a bit, and had fun at the film they made (with great liberties, adding lots of Julia Ch...more

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About Julie Powell

Julie Powell was born and raised in Austin, Texas, where she first fell in love with cooking — and her husband, Eric. She is the author of a cooking memoir, Julie & Julia, which was released in 2005. Her writing has appeared in Bon Appétit, The New York Times, House Beautiful, and Archaeology Magazine, among others. She lives in Long Island City, Queens.

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Books by Julie Powell

Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen

Destrinchando: uma história de casamento, carne e obsessão

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“Like the muscles knew from the beginning that it would end with this, this inevitable falling apart... It's sad, but a relief as well to know that two things so closely bound together can separate with so little violence, leaving smooth surfaces instead of bloody shreds.” — 17 people liked it

“My brother wrote another refrigerator magnet poem, when he was probably nineteen or twenty: 'When the flood comes/ I will swim to a symphony/ go by boat to some picture show/ and maybe I will forget about you.' How did he know way, way back then? How is it I know only now?” — 3 people liked it

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