BOOKS READ 13: CLEAVING: A STORY OF MARRIAGE, MEAT, AND OBSESSION BY JULIE POWELL
I knew this girl was holding out on me.
I think a lot of people are going to be like, “What the hell happened to Julie Powell?” when they read this book. Or maybe some of you might have seen it coming.
Many of you know Julie Powell of the “Julie and Julia” (book and novel) fame, and many of you really liked the book. I can see why. But bleh that book was really hard to get through. The author got so upset and cried over such mundane things like not being able to cook things right, but at the same time she wrote in such a way where she was trying to prove that yeah she cries at this kind of stuff, but so what. It just wasn’t believable, it was hard to swallow, it didn’t seem genuine, it felt like something deeper was going on with this woman.
And there was! (A torrid affair!)
Well I guess not during the process of writing that book, but whatever, the point is, I like this book way better than “Julie and Julia”, although I still feel like the author is still holding out on me, I think she is definitely being more true to herself, and also, the book is talking about way more interesting things and has recipes! I love food novels with recipes, when all else fails in a food novel, at least you have a recipe.
The ending was kind of interesting to me as well, there was no finality to it (I don’t know if this is to ensure another book) and I felt fine, I felt like it was the right way to end the book, I didn’t want more and that’s rare for a book that has an ambiguous ending.
Plus the cover for this book is way better than that weird egg handle whisk for “Julie and Julia”: http://hilobrow.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/julie-and-julia.jpg
It’ll be so interesting to see what they’ll do with this book when they turn it into the movie (I also didn’t really like the Julie and Julia movie either, very wholesome and boring) because there are some graphic sex scenes and some very unabashed use of the words “fuck”, “sex” and slapping and whoa watch out Amy Adams.
