about a book

jaclynday:

What I’ve Read: Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton

Hamilton, the founder/owner of Prune in New York City, wrote this memoir around her experiences with food, but there’s a lot of other things happening in this book too. The publishers had the lucky fortune of a fawning quote from Anthony Bourdain about the book (“Magnificant. Simply the best memoir by a chef ever. Ever.”) and have successfully marketed Hamilton’s memoir as a kind of female-chef-written Kitchen Confidential.

I can see how they came to the conclusion that that was a good idea. Hamilton is feisty, sometimes vulgar, unromantic about the rigors of the life of a chef and is capable of writing about food in a skilled, juicy, not cliched way. On the other hand, the book veers off in strange directions—controversial ones, actually. Hamilton calls herself a lesbian and alludes early on to a girlfriend, then (without much fanfare or explanation) marries a male Italian…maybe to assist his quest for a green card? The unhappiness in the marriage is apparent, but she goes on to have two children with him in rapid succession. Other writers and reviewers (and lesbian writers/bloggers) have problems with this, as you can imagine. While she’s under no obligation to the reader to explain her choices and 180 degree switch to near-traditional (i.e. heterosexual with two kids!) domesticity, it’s disappointing to see the lack of explanation nonetheless, especially after her over-sharing tendencies throughout the rest of the book. Bizarre.

The food portions of the book are easily the strongest. The vignettes that she puts into these sections are humorous, entertaining and thought-provoking. It’s when the personal and family-centric creeps in that the book (more often than not) can take strange turns into inconsistency.

Have you read this book? What did you think?