taken from Goodreads:
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 Fleischer's, a butcher shop where she buries herself in the details of food. She learns how to break down a side of beef and French a rack of ribs--tough, physical work that only sometimes distracts her from thoughts of afternoon trysts.
The camaraderie at Fleischer's leads Julie to search out fellow butchers around the world--from South America to Europe to Africa. At the end of her odyssey, she has learned a new art and perhaps even mastered her unruly heart."
You know that oft-overused comparison of something to a car wreck where you just can't look away? Yeah. I can't think of anything more applicable in this situation. A third of the way in, I just knew it couldn't get any worse, yet I continued to read. I just couldn't help myself...this woman goes beyond the batshit-crazy label I gave her in my review of Julie & Julia. Way beyond. This isn't the fun kind of batshit-crazy; this is the sad, pathetic kind.
It's been mentioned a time or two that bloggers must be a fairly narcissistic group of people in order to write about themselves all the time. You can add memoirists to that category too, I guess. On one hand, I'm a little impressed by someone who is willing to put everything out there -- an ongoing wreck of a marriage, a love affair with a man who is obviously bad for her, a taste for rough sex, an obvious issue with alcoholism, and enough emotional baggage to sink the Titanic. (Seriously, the first book only hinted at what a wreck Powell is. This book gives you a closer look -- way too close, if you ask me. And don't think that her sainted husband is beyond reproach -- he obviously has issues too.) But on the other hand, if you're going to put all this out there, then be ready for the backlash you are going to get (and based on the snark that's on Powell's blog, even in the blog title, I don't think she was ready...) I just can't imagine that her editor thought this was a good idea.
Then again, I'm curious as to whether her editor did much editing at all. The writing is a mess, but it seems quite appropriate for the subject matter -- overblown and lurid and hard to follow at times. The structure has potential, but the book lapses into Eat Pray Love in the second half and just never recovers. The thing is, in the hands of a better, more subtle, writer, the comparison that Powell struggles throughout the entire book to make (butchery as a picture of a relationship) could have worked beautifully. But Powell's hamfisted attempt just comes off as cringe-worthy.
I'm left wondering just how much of this memoir is fiction and just how much is real. There's a statement at the beginning of the book that warns the reader that all events are remembered from just one person's perspective, which can color the narrative. So is Powell guilty of pulling a James Frey, or is her point-of-view to be trusted? I'm not sure the reader will ever know -- and to be honest, I'm not sure I care.
