Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef
Written and Narrated By: Gabrielle Hamilton
Length: 10 hrs and 4 mins
Angst and Aioli!
The good thing is that this Tell Me What’s Next pick simply canNOT be worse than the last one (And I’d like to apologize yet again for offering it, but dang that beguiling Publisher’s Summary!). Or can it…?
Well, no… but…
There’s been an ongoing discussion of authors narrating their own work, AND sometimes it works (Think Luis Alberto Urrea!!!), sometimes it, well, it doesn’t quite. Think: Gabrielle Hamilton narrating this, Blood, Bones & Butter. I’ve never heard an opening of a book that was quite sooo unenthusiastic. She speaks of her childhood in a large family, the constant cooking of things, or roasting of lambs, of people gathered together, of root beer hitting the back of your throat like “emotion”… All in the most UNemotion-al tones imaginable. Seriously, throughout the entire book people are warm or angry, situations are exciting or fraught, food is mesmerizing or unutterably gross—Can we get an emotion here, please? No? Okay, how ‘bout a bit of an inflection here or there?
>Sigh<
This whole dismal narration thing is unfortunate as this is actually a really good, really well-written work. Hamilton tells us everything about her life up til now. How she was raised around food, warm on her mother’s lap; how the family dissolved when her parents’ marriage dissolved, and she was left to fend for herself even as she was barely into puberty; her impoverished world-trekking jaunt where she discovered starvation then the kindness of strangers.
And she expresses her joy (As much as she CAN express joy in her monotone) at her introduction to the place that would become her restaurant, Prune. Tell me if you don’t find the whole entry into that building gross with it’s rat urine, swarming cockroaches, moldering meat rotting in freezers that haven’t had electricity for GOD knows how long. Hamilton saw that, then promptly saw an eating experience she could offer, one filled with pure enjoyment of flavor and a warm acceptance of all diners as though they were all family.
I do so love foodie and restaurant books; I kinda sorta reeeally loved doing our Thanksgiving newsletter cuz it was so good to throw in Delicious and The Soul of a Chef. So, tho’ I whimper and whinge at the subpar narration, I did indeed have a really good time listening to this audiobook.
There’s no industry gossip here, no recipes or cooking tips. Mostly it’s about Hamilton finding home through cooking all over the world, through cooking with all sorts of people. The strongest parts of the book are when she’s in Italy cooking with her mother-in-law: Though they don’t speak the same language, they share the same love and respect for food and for flavor. (This whole relationship is wonderful and a breath of fresh air as she spends a LOT of time on her oh so flawed marriage—where somehow she thought she’d get a real relationship filled with love and acceptance from a man who married her so he could stay in the country. Uhm? She doesn’t…)
So expect more of a personal memoir, an autobiography, if you will, when you listen to this. It’s not as Foodie as Foodie can get, but it is indeed a flavorful account of an actively-lived life, one where our heroine makes choices and is about as dynamic as it gets.
Ya juuuust have to get past the flawed narration…
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.