Reviews tagging 'Abandonment'

Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef by Gabrielle Hamilton

2 reviews

melissakoe20's review

adventurous dark inspiring reflective sad medium-paced

3.25

I agree with the other reviewer that it felt like the author missed the mark on providing more reflections of herself, as she has very descriptive reflections of everyone else around her.

I thoroughly enjoyed her style of writing and learned a lot about food, cooking, etc. There were a few instances where she went a little too far (skirting the line of racism, fatphobia, etc) in my opinion.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Animal death and Animal cruelty

Moderate: Abandonment

msteinhaus's review

challenging medium-paced

3.0

The luscious descriptions of food and cooking in this book were captivating and made me constantly hungry. However, this is mostly a memoir about intergenerational trauma and how a challenging childhood forced Gabriella Hamilton to become a radically self-reliant human and chef. While this clearly led her to become a  successful trailblazer in her career, the overwhelming takeaway I gleaned from her memoir were the ways in which this childhood continues to hurt her. Throughout the book she expresses a profound sense of disconnection from and an intense bitterness and judgement towards many others. While she takes a very active role in her career, she demonstrates complete passivity/helplessness in her personal life. She seethes with anger. I found the whole story of her affair and eventual marriage intensely sad, as she relates her complete inability to ask for and go after what she wants from her relationships. Altogether I found this a challenging glimpse into one woman's pain, made more so by the fact that this book takes an "unapologetic" tone that I think may be blocking Hamilton from processing/moving past some of these hurts.

---

Content Warnings

Graphic: Abandonment