CHICK LIT MEMOIR
You'll remember Julie Powell for cooking her way through Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Her memoir about that year, Julie & Julia, was turned into a 2009 movie starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams. In her latest memoir, Cleaving, Julie's 10-year marriage is under threat as she is drawn into an affair with an old flame. So she decides to train as a butcher. At Fleischer's, a New York butcher shop, 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 Argentina and Ukraine to Tanzania. At the end of her odyssey, she has learned a new art and perhaps even mastered her unruly heart. Cleaving is out in December.