There are times while reading Blood, Bone, & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton that I find myself smiling from the simple pleasure of her prose. A good writer can tell you how she makes pasta. A great writer makes you want to dust the flour off your hands once she has finished telling you how she makes pasta. Gabrielle Hamilton is a great writer.

The opening pages of Blood, Bone, & Butter paint an achingly beautiful portrait of an ideal life lived with the perfect family that you know it will go terribly wrong in short order. And when it does go pear shaped, there is a great sense of loss. I wanted, really wanted, that perfect vision of living the good life to carry on for a little while longer. But that is not what this book is about, that is just the fantasy of what was, like Bambi before his Mom dies. The end of innocence is the beginning of the story.

And there are a lot of stumbles and rambles and pointless meanderings in this 291 page story of one of the best female chefs in NYC. (She is waiting for the day when she is one of the best chefs.) But like the odd and off topic chapters in Moby Dick, I didn’t really mind most of it, as I find the author’s company charming and her word choices and descriptions always visceral and engaging. Read the rest of this entry »