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Book Review of Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession

Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession
reviewed on
Helpful Score: 4


In her sequel to Julie and Julia, Julie turns herself into a totally unsympathetic protagonist. Her adventures with butchery completely take a backseat to the story of her taking a lover and completely steamrolling her husband. She seems to feel very little remorse about her extramarital affair, and after her lover leaves her she spends a huge portion of the book recounting how she obsessed over him for months, including sending him hundreds of unreturned emails, text messages, phone calls, waiting for hours outside his office and even sending gifts for him to his mother's house. While Julie probably could have made herself more relatable if she were a better writer or had a better editor, she utterly fails at this. I spent the entire book feeling bad for her husband and hoping he would move on to someone who didn't take him 100% for granted.