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

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.
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