Cleaving

What Julie did next: a riveting memoir of marriage, meat, and obsession from the author of Julie & Julia

Julie Powell spent a year cooking her way through Julia Childs impossible Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Her experiences were recorded in the hilarious bestselling book and film Julie and Julia, starring Stanley Tucci, Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. But what she did next took even adventurous Julie by surprise.

She trained as a butcher.

Apprenticed at Fleishers, she cut, chopped, hammered, sliced and cleaved her way through herds of meat; got splattered in gore; grew big muscles; and showed she has what it tool to make it as a woman in a mans world. At the same time she embarked on a passionate, red-blooded affair that threatened her marriage, and, at times, her sanity.

A remarkable confessional of butchery and adulteryHarpers Bazaar

Highly readable . . . beautiful writing, effortlessly filling pages with virtuoso descriptions of animal slaughter and human travailSunday Times

Powell makes you see how butchery might be enjoyable, even catharticSpectator