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Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession

Julie Powell

2.44 · Rating details · 4,289 ratings · 1,051 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

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Hardcover, 303 pages

Published December 1st 2009 by Little Brown and Company

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Jan 19, 2010 Ciara rated it did not like it

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 horrible.

wha 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. ...more

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Feb 21, 2010 La Petite Américaine rated it it was ok

Recommends it for: Chicks who need to get a divorce.

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

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 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 positive and all of the negative from Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen: no Julia Child, no ambitious cooking project, and lots more of Julie Powell. Now, ask yourself: would YOU want to read the true story of a fat, ugly, mildly famous chick's crumbling marriage, her unabashed accounts of rough sex with her lover and complete strangers, all held together by the glue that is ... (wait for it) ... the art of butchery? Occasionally spiced up with her weird, dated and nerdy fascination with the 90's serial Buffy The Vampire Slayer? Dotted with her musings about marriage as she tanks a bottle and a half of wine each night? Would you REALLY want to read this?

Yeah, me neither.

That's precisely why this book sucks. Julie forgot us, her meager little audience, and she thinks we actually give a fuck about her life instead of her cooking projects. Here's a hint, Julie: we don't give a shit.

You know what you do after the success of Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen? You write a sequel about world cuisine a là Anthony Bourdain. Or you attempt recreating dishes from imperial menus in the 1500s and let us know how it turns out. Or you get a job at the Food Network and write a book spilling all the dirt on their chefs (does The Barefoot Contessa really have sex with her husband, or does she eat her feelings??; is Emeril gay??; is Giada bulimic??)

But guess what you don't do?

You don't publish autobiographical trash that no one gives a baker's fuck (no pun intended) about. We're your readers, not your girlfriends. Save it for your shrink.

...more

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Aug 17, 2009 Rachel Cooper rated it did not like it

I only kept going to the end because I was REALLY hoping that her poor long-suffering husband would kill her. He didn't.

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Jan 12, 2010 Jennifer rated it did not like it

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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Apr 03, 2010 CC rated it did not like it

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 ...more

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Jul 11, 2010 Meg rated it did not like it

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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Mar 13, 2013 Danielle rated it really liked it

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 wil 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. ...more

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Feb 10, 2010 Erika rated it did not like it

Shelves: disliked

As Dorothy Parker once said, "This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force."

This book was dense, intensely personal, grotesque, in the same way that a microscope can be grotesque in its intimate examination, and not that much fun to read, which was really the killing blow.

The butchery sections were interesting, even poetic, but the heavy-handedness of her constant relation of how she saw her marriage and affair in comparison with what she learned as a but ...more

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Jan 29, 2010 Jamie rated it liked it · 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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Nov 20, 2009 Laura rated it did not like it

Shelves: biography-auto-memoir, food, nonfic, read-in-2009

Julie Powell's life is falling apart and it is ALL HER FAULT. She's cheating on her husband with a man she previously cheated on him with in college. She falls in love with the man and even considers leaving her husband for him, even as the lover pulls away from her and stops returning her calls. As the book progesses, she continues to pull away from her loving and supportive husband and desperately and needily clings to the lover, stalking him and purchasing $300 french scarves for him even aft Julie Powell's life is falling apart and it is ALL HER FAULT. She's cheating on her husband with a man she previously cheated on him with in college. She falls in love with the man and even considers leaving her husband for him, even as the lover pulls away from her and stops returning her calls. As the book progesses, she continues to pull away from her loving and supportive husband and desperately and needily clings to the lover, stalking him and purchasing $300 french scarves for him even after things are broken off. Seeking the same thrill she gets with the lover, D, she engages in anonymous sex encounters that leave her hollow and angry, sending D text messages about what he made her do.

Julie (I feel comfortable calling her Julie rather than Ms. Powell since her name was in her first book, and after all she describes her sex life very vividly, so we can afford to be a little familiar) also does some butchery in t his book. But it's almost an afterthought. As one of the many who read Julie and Julia and ended up loving the bits about Julia and the bits about food, but HATING Julie, this book takes it to the nth degree. I would have loved to read more about the butchery. I wanted to be a butcher for a large chunk of my childhood, at the age when the other girls planned on being ballerinas. I did NOT care to read more about how she leaves her blackberry lying around with sexy text messages that she refuses to delete so that her husband can read them. I don't want to read about her being in love with one man, but refusing to even contemplate divorcing another.

The whole time, Julie admits her failings with unflinching honesty. Normally, this would be a good thing in a memoir, but with Julie, she admits shocking things as if she is daring you to judge her. Her grandmother was an alcoholic, and Julie drinks at least two glasses of wine every night, turning to more alcohol the moment she is angry or the relationship is on the rocks. She talks in Buffyisms and describes her "special" oneness with her husband, and seems to think she is unique, as if EVERY COUPLE EVER didn't feel that way about their spouse, having a secret shorthand language, spouting pop culture quotes and knowing them instantly from context. It is not special.

Mostly, I think Julie treats the reader the same way she treats Eric. She brandishes her faults and shortcomings, daring us to judge her, saying things first so that we cannot wound her. Then, as she confesses and breaks down, she truly just wants us to absolve her. She leaves her blackberry around BEGGING Eric to discover the affair, and riles him up, hoping that he will finally break and force her to do penance for what she has done, end up forgiving her since she cannot forgive herself. I do not want to be involved, I don't want to absolve her. ...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 ...more

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Jan 27, 2010 Elevate Difference rated it liked it

Julie Powell wrote a blog called the Julie/Julia Project, which was turned into a book entitled Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, and last summer Julie & Julia hit the big screen as a movie featuring Meryl Streep. Admittedly, Julie & Julia was a heartwarming, sticky sweet account of Powell’s mission to cook her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The blog/book/movie led us to believe that Powell was a somewhat quirky woman who loved to cook, occasionally Julie Powell wrote a blog called the Julie/Julia Project, which was turned into a book entitled Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, and last summer Julie & Julia hit the big screen as a movie featuring Meryl Streep. Admittedly, Julie & Julia was a heartwarming, sticky sweet account of Powell’s mission to cook her way through Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking. The blog/book/movie led us to believe that Powell was a somewhat quirky woman who loved to cook, occasionally cursed, and had a ridiculously lovely marriage.

In Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, we learn that the public image Powell carefully crafted wasn’t true to form. Cleaving will surely smash any goody two shoes image fans may have had of Julie Powell. Though it does feature a few recipes and go into great detail about butchery, these things are more of an afterthought; Powell’s fucked up marriage and obsessive extramarital affair take center stage.

Out of the blue Powell decides to take up butchering and because she’s a go-getter, she sets out to obtain an apprenticeship at a butcher shop to the great confusion of her husband. Apparently it’s just a strong compulsion she feels. I call bullshit on that. It’s obvious to me that this would make an unlikely, though interesting second book idea. Perhaps her editors were breathing down her neck, or maybe Powell needed some kind of food-related slant to pacify her foodie fans while still being able to dissect her marriage in print. But it seems unlikely that it doesn’t just suddenly occur to a thirty-three-year-old to be a butcher. This is the same woman who famously dreaded boning a duck for months, after all.

During the months leading up to her apprenticeship, Powell’s marriage to her long-time husband Eric is falling apart thanks to a torrid love affair with a man she calls D. She cheated on Eric once before with D. while in college and when he calls her sometime after her Julie & Julia fame, the two pick up where they left and thus begin the meat metaphors. While hacking away at some animal, Powell will force a metaphor out of the skin and bones and sinew. Did you know that when “one has eaten a beautiful dry-aged steak, one remembers it, longs for it? That longing doesn’t stop. At least, it hasn’t yet and it doesn’t feel like it’s going anywhere.” Is she talking about the steak or D.? Oh Julie Powell, you’re clever.

In certain areas of her life Powell boasts that she’s tough as nails; she’s just “one of the guys.” She won’t ask for help in the butcher shop, won’t admit she’s afraid of using tools that could slice off arms or decapitate her. Julie Powell is a warrior, except when it comes to D. If he doesn’t respond to a text or e-mail, Powell goes off the deep end; sobbing, going through two bottles of wine a night, writing and calling him obsessively, even stalking him. These situations don’t illustrate the fragility of Powell, but rather her need for serious medication and therapy.

Powell’s portrayal of herself and her marriage aims to be complex, but it’s just perplexing. Her husband knows of her affair, but it’s never really discussed. She never really expresses guilt; she actually rubs her husband’s nose in it; bruises from D. cover her body and e-mails and “sexts” are left in plain view. When Eric begins an affair of his own, Powell seems happy for him. Despite all of this neither considers divorce. A divorce, Powell explains, is not a “clean break” like cracking open a joint with one “delicious pop.” It’s more like snapping a bone, which requires hacking, sawing, and destroying. I’d argue that a divorce couldn’t be any worse than what she’s already done to her marriage, but that’s just my opinion.

Powell is defined by the men in her life; she lets them shape and mold her into different women, whichever fits their needs. With Eric she is the asexual wife; cuddling, drinking wine in front of the television and making dinner together is enough and supposedly illustrates their intimacy. With D., she is the sex kitten, wanting to be taken, more than happy to submit to him and his every whim.

Powell wants to have her meat and eat it too, and for some reason, the people in her world allow her to carry on like this while remaining in her life. I’ll never know who the real Julie Powell is, but if she’s anything like the character in Cleaving, I wish her luck and something in the way of self-esteem.

Review by Tina Vasquez ...more

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May 27, 2010 Alena Guggemos rated it did not like it

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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Dec 21, 2009 christa rated it really liked it

When we last saw that saucy Julie Powell, she was a sweaty rosacea mess of marrow-crusted fingernails and damn-near oozing butter from her pores, at the finish line of a year-long Julia Childs' marathon fraught with self flagellation, hard liquor, and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" quotations.

"Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession," is what happened after the book deal and the movie deal: More restlessness, in the key of the restlessness that prompted her first project-turned-blog-turn When we last saw that saucy Julie Powell, she was a sweaty rosacea mess of marrow-crusted fingernails and damn-near oozing butter from her pores, at the finish line of a year-long Julia Childs' marathon fraught with self flagellation, hard liquor, and "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" quotations.

"Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession," is what happened after the book deal and the movie deal: More restlessness, in the key of the restlessness that prompted her first project-turned-blog-turned-book "Julie & Julia." Our spirited heroine is back -- and she's gotten naughty.

Julie has decided she wants to learn to be a butcher. She is absorbed into the staff at a hippie meat market in the Catskills. While Powell genuinely wants to learn the art of hacking through rib cages, and slicing pig cheeks, she also needs a distraction from that brain-worming sexual contortionist D -- her not-so covert alternative to her husband Eric.

Oh, Eric knows all about this D character. The dynamic Powell duo has been together so long that they sometimes wake with the same song in their head, Julie says. Not to mention that he has seen the text messages and emails. And so Eric had taken on his own side project, albeit reluctantly. The madcap swingers continue about their normal lives, sometimes coming home, sometimes staying out all night, never really talking about things -- things like how Julie likes it when D ties her up and smacks her around a bit.

By the time Julie ends up at Fleisher's wielding a meat cleaver, D has broken things off again, won't respond to her multiple and varied attempts at communication, and she is awash in passionate memories of the time she was tied to this or that, kissing in cabs, his smell, and other scenes from break-up montages.

Powell has two stories going on here, with opposite results:

1. There is a first-person journalistic account of learning how to be a butcher. This is amazingly visual and captivating. A mix of Susan Orlean-style reporting on a specialty or subculture that is made interesting by the way it is written more than, necessarily, the subject matter.

2. This is paired with doses of sloppy, overwrought puppy journal entries by someone who has obviously never skimmed "He's Just Not That Into You." This part is deeply confessional, like blog posts written in 2004 before people realized their bondage fantasies weren't necessarily as anonymous as they had hoped.

Powell obviously knows how to write, but it's also obvious that she learned to write at the school of blogger.com. She addresses the reader, inserts pop culture references -- almost exclusively from "Buffy," and sometimes slips in little conversational quips and ticks. ("I know, right?")

In the latter part of the book, she goes on a meat pilgrimage to Argentina and Tanzania. She writes these colorful bits about drinking fresh animal blood, wearing jewelry made from skin, bits of fur still poking out of it. She watches slaughters and meets a man who thinks a beer and a cigarette is a fair trade for attempted rape and her Blackberry. It's only when she goes back into her own head to her two loves that it unfavorably twiddles the uvula.

In post-publication interviews, Powell has indicated that she would like to try writing straight-up fiction. If her first two books are indication, she should do the exact opposite. Embedded journalism, told in third person: sheep herding, organic farming, ride with Hells Angels. She cannot be trusted to write fiction. It will be thinly-veiled. It will be overwrought. It will be dated. It will have a wine bottle on the cover and lipstick-scrawl font. It will be a waste.

...more

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Jan 29, 2010 Pumpkinbear rated it did not like it

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. The scene in which Julie has a quickie against a wall with a stranger, and does not even enjoy it, is where I began to skim.

I can't decide if I'm sad for Powell or angry with her. Did she intend for me to like her bumbling, intent self in Julie and Julia, and to develop a little crush on her bumbling, loyal puppydog husband Eric, only to crap all over all that in this book? Or did her life really go all the way to hell so that she actually thinks this is a good book to write?

The thing is, ther ...more

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Dec 17, 2009 Heather rated it it was ok

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 whiny ...more

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Dec 30, 2009 Lisa rated it it was ok

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 apa ...more

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Jan 23, 2010 Leeanna rated it did not like it

Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, by Julie Powell

Julie Powell's penchant for whining carries from her previous novel into "Cleaving." While reading the book, I actually felt very bogged down and depressed, especially after seeing page after page of her whining about her troubled marriage and pathetic affair. I call her affair pathetic because even after it's clear the other man doesn't want her, she stalks him, writes to him, texts him, and doesn't give up for two years (and th Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession, by Julie Powell

Julie Powell's penchant for whining carries from her previous novel into "Cleaving." While reading the book, I actually felt very bogged down and depressed, especially after seeing page after page of her whining about her troubled marriage and pathetic affair. I call her affair pathetic because even after it's clear the other man doesn't want her, she stalks him, writes to him, texts him, and doesn't give up for two years (and the reader gets to hear about it *every* time she tries to contact him). Perhaps writing "Cleaving" was a form of therapy for Powell, but it's the sort of writing that should stay in a blog or diary, not in a book.

I wanted to like this book. After not particularly enjoying Powell's first novel, "Julie and Julia," I had hoped that she would show something worthy of having published a second book. But "Cleaving" fell flat for me, like an unsharpened knife slicing into bread. The main subject, butchering, is only somewhat interesting, and I think the reader is overdosed on descriptions and techniques on how to break up this animal, or how to cut down that animal. My eyes started glazing over after the fifth or sixth long passage of yet another butchering story.

I had read the prologue of "Cleaving" in my copy of "Julie and Julia," and it caught my attention, but for me that was probably the best part of the book. The other employees at Fleisher's are far more interesting than Powell herself, and I did enjoy reading her stories about them. However her trips to different countries are recounted in a so-so manner, including way too many experiences of men finding her attractive. Do I really need to hear that a Maasai warrior finds her pretty, after hearing that Ukrainian and Argentinian men do as well?

If I were her, I certainly wouldn't want such details of my life spewed on a page, published for anyone and everyone to read. But I suppose it does take guts to publicly talk about an affair, her marriage troubles, her husband's lover, anonymous sex, etc., and her use of butchering as a way to find herself. I'm just not sure if it's good literary material; the liberal sprinkling of Buffy metaphors certainly doesn't help.

I'd say get "Cleaving" out from the library if you're determined to read it, before parting with your money.

1/5. ...more

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Jan 05, 2010 Shelah rated it liked it

Remember Julie Powell? Cute, sweet, Julie Powell so adorably portrayed by Amy Adams in the film Julie and Julia? Well, that Julie Powell and the one in Cleaving bear only a couple of resemblances: the hangdog husband Eric, and an annoying tendency to whine. In Bad Mother, Ayelet Waldman talks about how people with bipolar disorder make the best memoirists because they tend to overshare-- to lack the inhibition that makes most people stop talking about the most intimate details of their lives. Wh ...more

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Nov 23, 2011 Jamie Langes rated it really liked it · 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 emotions ...more

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Oct 16, 2009 Carin rated it really liked it

Shelves: memoir, food-books, 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 and he ...more

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Dec 10, 2009 edh rated it it was ok

Shelves: adult, nonfiction

Julie Powell is back... and this time she's chucked Mastering the Art of French Cooking in favor of extracting the internal organs of various animals. Don't forget, she's also cheating on her husband and obsessing about entrails. There's just no end to her versatility - in one book she's a spunky gal downtrodden by a dead-end job but nurturing her soul through food (Julie & Julia) and in the next, she's cleaving a pig head in two with a skil-saw before having gross anonymous sex in a hallway wit ...more

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Dec 07, 2009 Happyreader rated it it was ok

Shelves: food-and-drink, bio-and-memoir

At the end, I was so bored with the book that I skimmed all of her travels and read the end to see how she wrapped things up and called it a day. Who knew that obsession and kinky sex could eventually become so tiresome? I enjoyed her butcher shop apprenticeship but the meat saga also became tiresome once she traveled abroad since she primarily observed. Plus I was waiting for some epiphany that never came. Still self-absorbed and Buffy-obsessed at the end, just more resigned to her fate.

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Dec 02, 2012 Irena Smith rated it did not like it

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 but ...more

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Feb 08, 2010 Bookmarks Magazine rated it it was ok

Shelves: mar-apr-2010

So if you enjoyed Julie & Julia, you shouldn't spoil that experience by reading this book--or even the rest of this review. Cleaving aspires to boldly lay bare the inner workings of a global industry and an intimate relationship, but it falls short in both spheres. Though Powell is at her best when writing about meat, these sections are too few--and too graphic--to sustain the story. "The squeamish--morally and otherwise--should read elsewhere," advises the New York Times Book Review. Powell's e ...more

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May 04, 2018 Jennifer rated it really liked it

I hated this book and loved it at the same time. The writing was good and her life a disaster. It was more about her interpersonal journey than meat cutting. I cannot help but think of how mortified her husband was when and if he read her memoir.

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Nov 23, 2009 Kari rated it it was ok

Shelves: bios-and-memoirs

Julie Powell is an engaging writer. But Julie Powell should never again write about herself.

Julie Powell of Julie & Julia fame has written the second installment in her culinary journey, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession. Despite the success of her first novel, Julie is still having a crisis of self, this time one that involves an affair with a long-time acquaintance, a person we know only as 'D'. Rather than using food as a means to self-discovery, this time Julie uses food as Julie Powell is an engaging writer. But Julie Powell should never again write about herself.

Julie Powell of Julie & Julia fame has written the second installment in her culinary journey, Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession. Despite the success of her first novel, Julie is still having a crisis of self, this time one that involves an affair with a long-time acquaintance, a person we know only as 'D'. Rather than using food as a means to self-discovery, this time Julie uses food as an escape as she takes on an apprenticeship at a butcher in upstate New York, followed by a meat tour (traveled solo, of course) of Argentina, Ukraine, and Tanzania.

Where do I start with the reasons I wanted to throw this book across the room every 20 or so pages? I'll start with a more literary analysis:

This book had no arc. In Julie & Julia, we knew why she was embarking on the project—bored with dead-end jobs and stuck in a rut, she's trying to spice up her life with a project. In the introduction of Cleaving, Julie tells us she has no idea why she is doing this. What is driving her to become a butcher? She doesn't know, so the reader doesn't know, and we still don't know by the end. The premise seems forced by an editor or publisher as a follow-up to a wildly successful first novel.

That's all I've got in terms of "literary criticism." Now it's just going to get personal. I don't like Julie Powell. My general rule of life is to not compare an author's works to each other, but I am taking exception to my own rule. I enjoyed Powell's voice in Julie & Julia. She was snarky, sarcastic, and though a bit self-involved, I tended to look past that because I understand the manic emotions that come with a quarter-life crisis. Well now she has taken self-involved to a whole new level. In both books, she goes on and on about her wonderful husband, Eric. They're soulmates, they understand each other, they're practically the same person, yada yada. But she's having an affair with an old friend they both know...for over two years...and Eric knows about it...and she knows he knows but keeps doing it...and he stays with her! Grow some balls, dude! When the affair is finally over and 'D' ignores Julie, she becomes that girl. You know the one—clingy, needy, and whiny as she obsessively stalks him. And I mean literally stalks, sending him emails, texts, and gifts for months after they've ceased reciprocal communication. Everything she sees or hears or experiences somehow reminds her of D, and even a year later, she sends him a letters alongside the ones to Eric as she's traveling across the world. It's been a year! Get over it, because I'm sick of hearing about it. I could care less about cooking, but unlike her last book, I preferred the passages about food this time around.

Julie is brutally honest, and while I usually appreciate that in a memoir, in this case, that may be where I find fault. The most disgusting part of it, to me, is how she is revealing this intimate situation in graphic detail at the expense of the people she supposedly loves...all for a paycheck. These people are real. Everyone that Eric meets in the future can read the gruesome details of his marriage and judge him for his wife's words. He's going to look like a chump because she wanted a book deal. There's honest and then there's just plain cruel. Get over yourself, Julie Powell. Think about how something like this is going to affect other people. You have skill but start writing commentary for something, because I don't care about your train wreck of a life anymore. She does a good job weaving together the different aspects of the story, and some may be able to look past her personality to find the story "real" and entertaining, but the best part of this book to me was the cover art.

And for the love of god, stop with the Buffy quotes and references! As a Buffy aficionado, I am taking offense to the excessive reiteration that you're a fan of a cult show. ...more

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Dec 10, 2009 Laura rated it it was ok

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. I found this book kind of disgusting, and it had nothing to do with the meat parts. (I actually really liked the meat parts, and have been craving liver ever since I finished it.)

It's hard for me to read this book objectively, as I'm getting married in less than a year, and the meaning of marriage and marriage vows is on my mind a lot lately. I don't like to hear about other people's marriages falling apart, or about people breaking their marriage vows, because I really want my marriage to work, I found this book kind of disgusting, and it had nothing to do with the meat parts. (I actually really liked the meat parts, and have been craving liver ever since I finished it.)

It's hard for me to read this book objectively, as I'm getting married in less than a year, and the meaning of marriage and marriage vows is on my mind a lot lately. I don't like to hear about other people's marriages falling apart, or about people breaking their marriage vows, because I really want my marriage to work, and I really want marriage in general to work. I want it to be sacred. I want people to keep their marriage vows, and if they don't, I want them to either regret it and vow to do better, or to stop being married. Julie Powell does neither of these things.

In this book, Powell is willing neither to give up her exciting, sexy lover (even when he makes it abundantly clear that he's not into her, anymore), nor to end things with her husband. He's not willing to force things, either, even though he's not happy, and so the bulk of this book is about a kind of miserable stasis of selfish indecision, almost as painful to read about as it must have been to experience.

Even more frustrating is that Powell doesn't reach any sort of conclusion about her marriage or anything else in this book, though she seems to think she has. Towards the end, she tries to force a realization by recounting a conversation with her husband that basically amounts to them agreeing to "wait and see." What she doesn't seem to realize is that's what's been happening for the entire duration of the book, so when this revelation comes, it's a real let-down.

The only clear conclusion Powell comes to in this book is that she likes butchery. Her clarity on this subject may account for the passages on cutting up animals being the most satisfying in the book. Powell's writing skills have improved a lot, I feel, since Julia & Julia, and these passages are delicious to read, but her attempts to draw parallels between butchery and her romantic life seem forced, and a little clumsy at times. I also really enjoy the way she chose to include recipes. It's a clever device, and works much better at creating interesting interludes in the story than her awkward, presumptuous passages from Julia Child's POV did in her previous book.

In the end, I realized I wanted to read this book not so much because I liked Julie & Julia, but because I liked Julie Powell, and I was disappointed because I really don't like her, anymore. Powell's voice in her first book was sardonic, yet hopeful, equally astonished and delighted by the success of her writing/cooking project. She was witty as well as humble, and I was excited to see what she would come out with next.

In this book, Powell has lost her likability. Her voice is that of a person who has completely bought into her own hype, and feels entitled to do whatever she wants, no matter how it may hurt those around her. She seems infatuated with herself and her own drama, and so thinks everyone else must be as well. She's also lost her sense of self-awareness, and her frequent attempts a self-deprecation ring utterly false. She doesn't regret what she's done, and hasn't learned or grown from it at all. The only thing she knows for certain is that she likes to cut up meat, and in the end, that knowledge is all the reader gains from this book.

I'm sure Powell was under a lot of pressure to put out a second book after the release of the film version of Julie & Julia, but I really wish she had waited until she had something to say before writing Cleaving. I think this story would have benefited a great deal from some additional perspective.
...more

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Dec 13, 2009 Geraldine rated it did not like it

I love books. I love food. I love books about food. I even liked "Julie and Julia" very much, because the author was so darn likeable. But "Cleaving" is awful. Maybe I have less sympathy for a rich authoress who is cheating on her nice husband than I did when she was a struggling temp who just loved Julia Child. Maybe it was the endless meat/sex metaphor, because ten thousand pages of THAT won't get old. Maybe it was the racist travel-to-find-myself plot (actual last line for a chapter: "I pin m ...more

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Sep 16, 2009 Jen rated it it was ok

Shelves: non-fiction

Check out my review at http://bookaweekwithjen.blogspot.com/... ...more

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About Julie Powell

Julie Powell

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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. ...more

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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.” — 32 likes

“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 likes

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