From the title to the last page, former blogger Julie Powell's startling second memoir, "Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession," is smart and compelling but frequently coy: Does she mean cleaving together? Or faithful to the point of clinging? Or separating naturally? Or splitting open as with, say, a cleaver?

It's soon clear Powell means all four and would rather her readers sort out the relationship-agonizing she recounts in a departure from her breezy, almost Texas-accented first self-exploration. That blog about cooking hundreds of Julia Child recipes in a cramped kitchen in the New York City borough of Queens became a book and later the basis for this year's popular movie "Julie & Julia," starring Meryl Streep, Amy Adams and Stanley Tucci.

"Cleaving" opens as Powell starts a new quest — to master the traditionally male skill of butchering, starting with an apprenticeship somewhere in the greater New York area. She lands at a high-end meat shop in the Catskill foothills, where the owners, one of whom had kept vegan for 17 years, offer Powell a warm and nonjudgmental way station.

We hear her new co-workers' jokes and the lines she likes best from her favorite TV series. And the conversational recipes that culminate 15 of the book's vignettes give readers a taste of the home cooking Powell enjoys on four continents as she continues her search. (One 12-year-old reviewer pronounced the Ukrainian banosh "just like cream of wheat, only delicious.")

But the secretary who set out in 2003 to conquer a Julia Child cookbook has nearly vanished, and only superficially is "Cleaving" the tale of a woman finding meaning again.

Powell obsesses over a masochistic affair with an old flame who looks her up after she's become famous. And the idyllic marriage in "Julie & Julia" has collapsed into a stasis where the Powells share two bottles of wine — and more — each evening. Whether the drinking has led them to skip sex for months at a stretch or the other way around hardly matters.

Like the best elements of the blogosphere, "Cleaving" gives readers an almost tactile sense of its author's vulnerabilities: Powell acknowledges right away that she is "familiar with the landscape of addiction." "Cleaving" also offers less resolution than some readers will want. But Powell's steadfast femininity and confident voice are refreshing.