Gabrielle Hamilton reads from her memoir: Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef
Wed 1/25 7pm-8pm
Gabrielle Hamilton reads from the paperback release of her memoir: Blood, Bones & Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef
Before Gabrielle Hamilton opened her acclaimed New York restaurant Prune, she spent twenty hard-living years trying to find purpose and meaning in her life. "Blood, Bones & Butter" follows an unconventional journey through the many kitchens Hamilton has inhabited through the years: the rural kitchen of her childhood, where her adored mother stood over the six-burner with an oily wooden spoon in hand; the kitchens of France, Greece, and Turkey, where she was often fed by complete strangers and learned the essence of hospitality; Hamilton's own kitchen at Prune, with its many unexpected challenges; and the kitchen of her Italian mother-in-law, who serves as the link between Hamilton's idyllic past and her own future family--the result of a prickly marriage that nonetheless yields lasting dividends. By turns epic and intimate, Gabrielle Hamilton's story is told with uncommon honesty, grit, humor, and passion.
“As is clear to anyone who has met her – or anyone who has plunged into the heady rush of her memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter, – Ms. Hamilton is not someone who has much use for dainty conversational censorship. . . . On the page and in the kitchen, Ms. Hamilton can be charming, tempestuous, persnickety, vulgar, poetic, provocative and mothering, sometimes all in the course of a single flurry of sentences. . . . A culinary Cormac McCarthy.” – New York Times
“Though Ms. Hamilton’s brilliantly written new memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter, is rhapsodic about food – in every variety, from the humble egg-on-a-roll sandwich served by Greek delis in New York to more esoteric things like ‘fried zucchini agro dolce with fresh mint and hot chili flakes’ – the book is hardly just for foodies. Ms. Hamilton, who has an M.F.A. in fiction writing from the University of Michigan, is as evocative writing about people and places as she is at writing about cooking, and her memoir does as dazzling a job of summoning her lost childhood as Mary Karr’s “Liars’ Club” and Andre Aciman’s “Out of Egypt” did with theirs.” ” – Michiko Kakutani, New York Times
Author photo copyright Melissa Hamilton
The paperback edition goes on sale 1/24/12, but call ahead and we'll reserve a copy for you. As always, if you can't make the event we can have it signed for you.