After a misspent youth involving dead-end jobs and questionable decisions, Julie Powell, author of Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, has found her calling as a writer-cum-butcher. She lives in Long Island City, Queens, when she isn't in Kingston, NY, cutting up animals.
Since her year spent cooking her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking, recounted in Julie & Julia, Julie Powell's mind has turned to meat. Cleaving follows Powell as she learns to butcher, and the process is inspired by, and dovetails with, a personal story - this time of her overcoming an affair that threatens her marriage. Pleasures of the flesh, indeed * Vogue * Powell's hectic, confiding style is the literary equivalent of a girly evening of dirty gossip over a bottle or five of Sauvignon blanc...her narrative is vivid, well-structured, intense and moving * Daily Mail * A remarkable confessional of butchery and adultery * Harper's Bazaar * Highly readable . . . beautiful writing, effortlessly filling pages with virtuoso descriptions of animal slaughter and human travail * Sunday Times *