A Lambertville Memoir: Blood, Bones, and Butter

We read Blood, Bones, and Butter, the Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef, for our book group this month, written by Gabriella Hamilton, famous chef and now famous writer. It's a memoir, not a crime novel, so I'm out of my officially credentialed field of expertise here, but I found it to be an excellent piece of writing and I wanted to tell you so.

First of all, if her meals are as deliciously satisfying as her sentences and paragraphs, it must be a wonderful experience to eat at her Manhattan restaurant. Reading this book will make you hungry, although there are no actual recipes included in it. You will fly to your kitchen in search of something real to cook, and you will feel dismay because, not only is there nothing real to cook, but your pots, pans, and utensils are not in the state of rigorous order and cleanliness that Gabriella Hamilton would require.

Secondly, as far as the memoir goes, she dishes without oversharing. I think this is a good thing. Most of us could paint our ex-spouses naked (as they could paint us, if they had the skill) and people would be appalled. But we draw the cloak of charity, rightly. The reader understands that her mother is sore at her father, that she herself is sore at her husband, but she never tells us precisely why. We are left with the feeling that it is the nature of women to be angry at men, or in the nature of men to irritate their women.

And thirdly, the early part of the book is a charming picture of old New Hope and Lambertville. This is why the book club ladies picked it up in the first place, for we are Lambertville women. We heard that Jimmy Hamilton, Gabrielle's father, was unhappy with the book. Mr. Hamilton is a very big frog in our little pond. He runs a restaurant of his own, right across my back fence. No longer the penniless Bohemian of Gabrielle's childhood, he has enough money to endow various public works, and enough generosity to give cooking lessons to the old folks at the geezer health club where I work out. He is a helluva nice guy. I'm not sure what he hated about the book. I like him even better, knowing he was once a penniless Bohemian with romantic visions, like the rest of us. You'll be happy to know that now and then he still roasts lamb outside over an open fire.

Anyway, read the book if you get a chance. It's good.