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| Hatchette Books |
Julie Powell
2005
The Summary
"Powell needs something to break the monotony of her life. So, she invents a deranged assignment: she will take her mother's dog-eared copy of Julia Child's 1961 classic, Mastering the Art of Frech Cooking, and cook all 524 recipes in the span of just one year."
Truthfully, the subtitle says it all.
The Good
I read Julie and Julia by Julie Powell as part of my Read Harder Challenge for 2016 (which you can read more about here), and I was absolutely delighted with it.
Amusing, candid, and insightful, I really enjoyed listening to Julie Powell's memoir--or food memoir? I'm not really sure where it falls in the grand scheme of things, but, regardless, I thought it was a wonderful book. It's riotously funny, yet strangely poignant. Oddly enough, it reminds me of Jenny Lawson and her memoir, Furiously Happy--yet just a tiny bit less chaotic.
Not by much, considering Julie Powell undertakes to make 524 different recipes, many of which take hours to prepare, in just one year in a crappy little apartment in Queens. It's astonishing the things she (and her marriage) manages to survive, including: biological clocks, frozen pipes, disastrous dinner parties, inane dead end secretarial jobs, break downs, Blanche days, and celebrity crushes.
It's really a pretty amusing book, especially if you decide to listen to it as read by the author (which I did--and which I highly recommend); however, it's not quite the food memoir I expected. In fact, Julie and Julia is more memoir than food. Julie is hellbent on recreating all of Julia Child's recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, vol. 1 and, in her journey, she learns how to make a variety of dishes and confronts some of the most trying times of her life.
While it features a lot of cooking, Julie and Julia feels like it's more about the experiences of cooking and the results, specifically what happens to the author as she slogs through more than 500 French recipes, than the actual cooking, but I can't say I minded.
Julie and Julia is strangely heartwarming and incredibly amusing. To me, it strikes just the right balance that makes it a memoir worth reading, especially if you have the chance to listen to the author tell her own story. It makes Julie and Julia that much more memorable.
The Bad
I will note that while I was listening to the audiobook I discovered I borrowed the abridged version. I don't know if the audiobook had the full text, but I do know I missed a few things that might otherwise have filled in details or fleshed out the characters involved. It was my only disappointment in a book that was, otherwise, wonderful.
The Ugly
Okay, I'll be honest: I liked Julie, but, sometimes, I just couldn't handle very much of her.
I mean, I liked her and I liked her style of writing. I loved listening to the audiobook, because it has this authenticity to it, this genuine emotion that seeps through every chapter. However, I could only take so much. She was very dramatic and she stressed out so easily--and, confidentially, she stressed me out when she went on a rant about how cooking was going to ruin her and so on...and, sometimes, it was just a little too shrill, you know?
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