There's been a lot of reviews that are focused around how much the reviewers feels for Powell's long-suffering husband, Eric, who not only gets to watch his wife have an affair but then write about it. Ta-da! But forget Eric - the person I feel really bad for is Powell's therapist, who I imagine, much like the reader, curled up in the fetal position every time Powell makes a bad decision, like having hate sex with random strangers.
It's worth asking if this memoir would be more bearable if Powell was male - certainly we don't seem to care so much when Great Men of Literature cheat on their wives. But it's not only that Powell is cheating on Saint Eric - it's that she's doing so with a man who has basically tattooed "He's Just Not That Into You" across his chest. Powell would also probably be better off if her core contingent of fans hadn't been so infatuated with Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously . While I will never attempt to cook like Julia Child, many a woman can relate to the idea of being lost in her 20s. It's harder to relate to someone cheating on their loving husband, especially if you've waited to find a nice guy.
After Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously you wanted to go grab a glass of wine with Powell. After Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession , you want to wash your hands. But if you can manage to wade through all of Powell's oversharing and her mixed metaphors on meat, there are some twinges of provocative ideas. At one point one of Powell's co-workers says "Well, every marriage is its own special hell, sometimes, right," and you think, well, yeah. Powell met her husband in college, and there's a lot to be said for her voyage of self-discovery in the latter half of the book through the Ukraine, Tanzania and Argentina. Perhaps the best way to approach Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession is to just start on page 193 when Powell takes off, literally and figuratively.
