Blood, Bones and Butter

 By Gabrielle Hamilton

Book Review Douglas Notestine

This is a non-fiction book about the author Gabrielle Hamilton’s life story as a chef and a mother. She is now the owner of acclaimed New York restaurant “Prune”.The book starts from her childhood and goes into detail of the various events in her life mostly involving cooking. It goes into fine detail describing food and she also uses cooking and food as metaphors for thing occurring in her life. She grew up in a large family and she always found herself in the kitchen from when she was very little. Her family used to have feasts with over 100 people and would cook massive amounts of great food. Gabrielle knew that cooking would be something that she would want to pursue for the rest of her life. Her parents getting divorced would shatter the dreams of these large parties but her new Italian family would help change her and grow as a cook too. Her mother taught her almost everything about cooking. And after many years of hard work and travelling all over the world she would open her own restaurant which eventually became a major success and she got much acclaim for it. This was quite an interesting book although I doubt that it is completely non-fiction, a story-teller must always be creative or it will become a sort of a documentary. I was particularly impressed by the detailed and passionate ways she would describe each dish and the food. Reading this book made me hungry more than once. This is a fairly good book and I recommend it to anyone that enjoys cooking or a good life story of a strong woman.

Here are some questions for discussion

What kind of food do your parents cook at home?

If so do you help your parents when they cook?

Do you like the food at home?

What would you think if your parents got a divorce?