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Blood, Bones, And Butter: The Inadvertent Education Of A Reluctant Chef (2011)

by Gabrielle Hamilton(Favorite Author)

3.67 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

140006872X (ISBN13: 9781400068722)

languge

English

genre

Memoir & Autobiography

publisher

Random House

review 1: What a lovely book this is. It isn't really a memoir about being a chef, such as Kitchen Confidential, as it is a rumination on life. As a child, the author led a magical family life with two temperamental artists for parents. Her life as she knew it imploded when she was 13 and both parents essentially walked away from their children, leaving them to fend for themselves.The story picks up when she opens her now-famous restaurant Prune, and her life accelerates. She marries, has two children and runs headlong into adult pain when she realizes how unhappy she is in her unconventional marriage to an Italian doctor. My favourite part of the book is her luscious descriptions of summer spent in Puglia with her husband's family. The description of the food, the view, the villa, ... moreand the long family dinners was enough to make me swoon. The poignant last chapter, when she realizes that she will probably never experience it all again, was heartbreaking.This was a really good book. I loved it.
review 2: I'll admit to be sucked into almost any book written by a chef or about a chef. I love to cook and experiment in the kitchen, it's relaxing to me and fun. 3 of my 4 brothers have been or are in the food industry and my parents owned a restaurant for a short time. That said, although I thought long and hard about being in the food industry myself, I made the decision to not go that route, to just enjoy the job of being in the kitchen without the pressure.Gabrielle's writing is beautiful. It was poetic and descriptive enough to transport me to the old warehouse where she grew up, to feel the despair when she was left alone, to smell the rot in the abandoned walk-in, to see the Italian countryside and to feel her longing for something that she left just out of her reach.I enjoyed the story of Gabrielle's young life and it was meaningful to the understanding of why she did many of the things later in her life. I enjoyed reading about the itinerant chef catering jobs and her time in grad school. My view is she has a self-destructive gene that won't allow herself to be happy and give herself wholly to a situation other than the restaurant which is really a manifestation of herself. Her relationship is not fulfilling because she won't let it be.Overall I liked it and I would recommend it to readers who like books by and/or about chefs. less

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