Julie & Julia

by Julie Powell
(2005 | 307 p)

This particular memoir found its way onto my reading list because I stumbled upon the movie one Saturday afternoon, quite by accident. I was sucked in by Meryl Streep, really. (She did an amazing Julia Child.) But be warned, the movie is not the book. And this time I don't mean that in a "the book is always better than the movie" sort of way.

Julie Powell is having a mid-life crisis at the ripe old age of 29. She has a steady job that she mildly hates and a loving husband whom she also mildly hates (if the verbal and mental abuse she heaps on him are any indication of that sort of thing). She decides that the only way to overcome her angst is to cook her way through Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in one year and to share her misadventures in a blog. She started this blog when blogs were the IT thing and, subsequently, got a book deal for her trouble.

There are two important things to keep in mind if you decide to read this memoir. First of all, despite what the title may indicate this book contains a lot about Julie and not enough about Julia. And, secondly, the Julie Powell of real life is not the Julie Powell of the movie. This should go without saying but somehow caught me unaware all the same. The movie Julie is cutely neurotic. The real Julie cusses like a sailor and is perpetually on the edge of a meltdown. She also manages to insult at least everyone, from Republicans to Vegetarians, at least once. It was very amusing for the first couple of chapters; I'll even admit to chuckling a time or two. She's funny. But a whole 300 some pages of her histrionics was more than I could bear. Perhaps I'm just not cut out to be a reader of memoirs?