OCTOBER 2018 - AudioFile
Lifestyle journalist and magazine editor Camas Davis offers a subdued and predominantly monotone narration of her work. The audiobook is jointly a memoir and an examination of issues, ethical and otherwise, related to the humane killing of animals for food consumption. The author’s narration style does not absorb the listener. Davis founded the Portland Meat Collective in Oregon and later the Good Meat Project, a nonprofit committed to responsible meat production and meat-related education and reforms. Her education related to beef and food in general was expanded by an extended stay in Gascony, France, a visit that took place at a crossroads in her quizzical life. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Publishers Weekly
04/30/2018
With grace and power, first-time author Davis tells of how she traded a keyboard for a cleaver. After being laid off from her job as an editor at an Oregon magazine, Davis revisited a long-held dream: working as a butcher. She then reconnected with an acquaintance, Kate Hill, a cookbook author and cooking teacher living in Gascony, France. Hill led Davis through a foodie’s dream journey—with Armagnac, foie gras, dried duck prosciutto—and gave her a primer on the cultural preferences in cuts of meat (while Americans enjoy ribs, the French prefer to turn the loin into bone-in pork chops). Davis writes eloquently of the affinity she felt for the trade—“the act of butchery is, if nothing else, an immediate one requiring you to locate your own body in the present tense.” The road wasn’t without bumps, particularly what Davis calls Bunnygate—animal rights activists who excoriated Davis and her business partners for slaughtering rabbits for food. After returning to the U.S., Davis founded the Portland Meat Collective, a school in Oregon dedicated to meat education that she still runs. Descriptions of the butchery process are wonderfully detailed (to cut into a pig skull, “pull the skull and the lodged cleaver into the air... and bang it down on the table”). Her powerful writing and gift for vivid description allow readers to feel as if they, too, are embarking on a life-changing journey. (July)
From the Publisher
“Killing It: An Education (Penguin Press) is as unflinching as one might imagine a book with that title to be, but it’s also humanizing and thoughtful—with the butchery comes a journey of self-realization applicable far beyond the realm of animals or food.” — Vanity Fair
“Even if you don’t have meat-butchering ambitions (or care for beef all that much), you’ll enjoy going along with Camas on her journey into a totally new world.” —Bon Appetit
“A skilled storyteller . . . Davis takes the essential need to eat and compels us to examine how, why and what we consume, without preaching or judging.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune
“Killing It is both a sensual and sensitive ode to the necessity of lifelong learning and a deep look into the painstaking work of turning animals into "farm to table" food that is simultaneously highly prized and depressingly devalued in U.S. culture." — Salon
“With grace and power, first-time author Davis tells of how she traded a keyboard for a cleaver…. Her powerful writing and gift for vivid description allow readers to feel as if they, too, are embarking on a life-changing journey.” — Publishers Weekly
“Finding beauty and moral high ground in the abattoir ….The making of a young female entrepreneur rendered in unvarnished detail.” — Kirkus
“Davis writes with the precision and pacing of a former editor, but one who has gained experience that extends well beyond Manhattan skyscrapers." — Vogue.com
OCTOBER 2018 - AudioFile
Lifestyle journalist and magazine editor Camas Davis offers a subdued and predominantly monotone narration of her work. The audiobook is jointly a memoir and an examination of issues, ethical and otherwise, related to the humane killing of animals for food consumption. The author’s narration style does not absorb the listener. Davis founded the Portland Meat Collective in Oregon and later the Good Meat Project, a nonprofit committed to responsible meat production and meat-related education and reforms. Her education related to beef and food in general was expanded by an extended stay in Gascony, France, a visit that took place at a crossroads in her quizzical life. W.A.G. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine
Kirkus Reviews
2018-05-06
Finding beauty and moral high ground in the abattoir. In this debut memoir, Davis recounts the period when she was laid off from writing for a weekly paper in her native Portland, Oregon, and decided to become a professional butcher and local farming activist instead. When the first few butchers she sought out dismissed her attempts to learn the trade, the author maxed out her last credit card to study for seven weeks on a cooperative farm and slaughterhouse in Gascony, France. Davis' apprenticeship introduced her to a different kind of industry, a radically local form of vertical integration wherein they slaughtered, butchered, and sold every inch of the animals they raised to customers living within driving distance. These conscientious slaughtering and curing methods inspired Davis to seek out other earnest, like-minded practitioners when she returned home. With few resources besides her partner, Joelle, a fellow female butcher, and her way with words, Davis helped start the Portland Meat Collective, one of the first organizations of its kind dedicated to educating American consumers about the provenance of their meat and to promoting the less familiar cuts and methods that whole-animal chefs around the world have been serving for generations. Though the meat-squeamish might skip over the visceral descriptions of killing animals, Davis writes for them in particular. The author and her ilk believe those who eat meat have a moral obligation to source it as conscientiously and locally as possible. The author writes almost as much about her love life and her search for authentic self-redefinition as she does about carving carcasses. She relates her simultaneous relationships with a man and a woman, her pratfalls as a butcher's apprentice, and the shambling state of her affairs in general, but the writing, like her life, clicks into place when she loses herself in the subject matter. The making of a young female entrepreneur rendered in unvarnished detail.
