Blood, Bones & Butter by Gabrielle Hamilton

Blood, Bones & Butter is not just another book for foodies. Gourmands will enjoy it, but so will almost any reader who likes a good story with offbeat characters. There's not a single recipe in this book whose cover depicts a chicken's head turned upside down -- perhaps reflecting the way life has at times been for author/chef Gabrielle Hamilton, neither predictable nor conventional.

I cannot recall a single paragraph where Hamilton, owner of Manhattan's popular Prune restaurant, waxes eloquently about the taste of green vs. white asparagus, oysters on the half shell or a mirepoix.

What Hamilton does is wax, usually with eloquent writing and often with earthy language, about a life spent learning to survive and even thrive in the kitchen and, more importantly, with her own family and her husband's -- with food somehow almost always at center stage. Her work in the food industry has not always been a pretty job. She writes of almost being arrested once in her low-wage waitress days. She recalls later cleaning up "legions of cockroaches," human excrement, rotten apples and the remains of a dead rat.

Clearly, a chef who will clean up a stranger's excrement rather than delegate that chore to a subordinate is likely not prone to food snobbery. Indeed, Hamilton, who's more akin to Anthony Bourdain than Daniel Boulud, once even mentions how unimpressed she was by a meal at one of New York's most upscale restaurants. Still, food is a big part of Hamilton's story -- her memories of it as child at family meals, her dependence on it to make a living as a young adult and finally her adventure with and love of good food and those around her who also celebrate it and, like her, want to learn more about it.

Hamilton is also nothing but candid about herself. She writes of her strengths; she writes of her weaknesses. She writes of her own indecisiveness. She writes of her lesbian lovers followed by her Italian husband and never fully explains the change in lifestyles, sounding a bit baffled by it herself. The couple have two children but have never lived together.

Hamilton tells her life story almost as if she were talking, without dressing up her language or her actions over the years. The same goes for those who have played major roles, good or bad, in her life. Her parents, who divorced when she was a child, come across as more than a little negligent. Her in-laws, whom she sees once a year in Italy, fare much better despite the lack of demonstrative love between Gabrielle and her husband. I say "demonstrative" because it's clear that Hamilton wants more from her husband, that she wants him to suggest a romantic evening or such even though he is more concerned with getting the latest iPhone.

Because of the first-person narration, the reader sees all of the characters in Hamilton's life through her point of view, an unflinchingly opinionated one at that.

Hamilton is not only a gifted chef but also holds a master of fine arts degree in fiction writing. She is a visual artist as well. Just look at the picture of the bloody asparagus at the front of her book.

Hamilton's memoir is interesting and, for the most part, well-done. At times, though, I found her writing rough and hard to follow -- a bit uneven just as Hamilton's own life has been.