JULIE POWELL STRIKES AGAIN

Julie Powell had been a long term temp when she burst out of obscurity in 2005 with her big best-seller, Julie & Julia – My Year of Cooking Dangerously, in which she relates her experience in cooking all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s legendary cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, in the course of one year
Now her book has been turned into a movie starring Merryl Streep, as Julia Child, and Amy Robinson as Julie Powell, so she is very much in the news again.
And to top it all off she has a new book out, Cleaving – a story of Marriage, Meat & Obession.
This book, is about her adventures in becoming a butcher, she learns at Fleisher’s in Kingston, New York, “nestled in the Catskills” where she discovers how to break down a side of beef and French a rack of ribs.

It is hilariously funny, mostly. But the book, as the subtitle suggests is more than a butcher’s romp, it is also the amazingly frank story of her marriage, (she is 35 years old by the way), and an uncontrolled love affair. The detail she reveals is astonishing, so much so that I am amazed these two men, her husband and her lover, are still speaking to her!
As the cover blurb suggests, this is a riveting memoir of love, marriage and meat. In the end all ends well, I think, and I have to confess I couldn’t put the book down.

Published by Fig Tree (Penguin) - NZ$37.00