Blood, Bones, and Butter

Gabrielle Hamilton's memoir took me much longer to read than it should have, which doesn't entirely reflect my reaction to the book. I read the galley copy and was perhaps a bit set up by the ravings that covered its front and back: Mario Batali wants to burn all the books he's written, in homage, and Anthony Bourdain claims it's "simply the best memoir by a chef ever. EVER." So. Yeah, where do you go from there?

Well, I dove in, and Blood, Bones, and Butter is a fascinating account of a chef by accident. At least, that's how it comes across. Hamilton grows up in a slapdash, complicated family in that there's never enough money and there are too many kids without enough supervision, and there are massive indications that both parents have a screw or two loose, even while they gave their children plenty of interesting traits and skills. Hamilton learns to cook from watching her meticulous, ex-ballerina mother pull off meals as only a French woman can. There is no waste and no skimping, which seems like a contradiction but one that echoes throughout the book: Get the best you can afford and don't mess with it.

Hamilton's mother retires a bit awkwardly from the family and the book, only to reappear a totally different woman near the end. There were some disturbing parallels to my own mother which was one of a couple of reasons I put this book aside. The other that bothered me--and this is my personal tic--was having to listen to Hamilton talk about all the drugs she used to get where she is now. I get so tired of hearing that all the interesting people in the world were abusers at some point (or still are), but that's just me. Doesn't mean anything about the book and Hamilton isn't annoying about it.

The book isn't really a chef memoir in that food isn't lavished over in quite the way you'd expect. It seems more like a "how the hell did I get here and what were people thinking, putting up with me?" For this, the tone is just right. You believe in Gabrielle Hamilton, whether she's disabusing you of any romance over the beautifully catered food you ate at that fund-raiser last week or tossing KFC at some camp counselors, undeserving of a lobster dinner (really, they were undeserving, and the lobster story is depressing). When she stumbles into opening her own restaurant, it seems just as crazy and just as lucky as when she stumbles into her first job at age 13 when all she wanted was to have enough money to buy shampoo (because she sure wasn't getting money for that at home). Even Hamilton admits how wide-eyed and innocent she was about the restaurant business and, having read about her crazy path, "innocent" is not a word that comes easily to mind.

Food rhapsody comes late in the book (in the 'Butter' section) and then it's because that section takes place in Italy. I think it's a national requirement to talk lusciously about food in Italy and Hamilton switches gears readily to do just that. "Blood" is not just about family, but about the brutal way by which Hamilton enters the world of (restaurant) work; "Bones" is the structure she builds for herself, including the family; "Butter" is the place where she is now, though mellow, like innocent, doesn't begin to describe Gabrielle Hamilton.

So, best chef memoir ever? Naw, probably not, but I would eat anything Hamilton put in front of me, even if I never got a great sense of what she cooks. I just know she'll get it done and it'll be delicious and perfect.

Started Early, Took My Dog

Not everyone likes Kate Atkinson's books, but apparently everyone likes her character Jackson Brodie. This is the fourth book in which the former policeman appears, still searching for lost girls or lost childhoods, which he's been doing ever since his own sister was abducted and murdered when he was a child. In Started Early, Took My Dog, Brodie is older and wandering. He's starting to hear the voice of his ex (not quite wife) and he can't help getting muddled into the lives of other people even while he muddles his own.

Still, Brodie can be forgiven (as so many have forgiven him before) because he's returned to his old stomping grounds, chasing the ghostly childhood of a young woman now in Australia. She's eager to discover her origins which are strangely murky. While he's trying to rescue her childhood, Brodie also manages to rescue a dog from maltreatment, gets himself entangled in the lives of an actress suffering from dementia and an overweight, lonely former policewoman who is on the run with another lost child. There's a lot of time shift and character shift, and a lot of names to keep straight, but the book reads right along. Atkinson likes to throw out little tid-bits and then move on, which can be good in a mystery, but can be a bit maddening as well.

Brodie is a little tangential to the story even if he's there for the great denouement, on a train platform, no less: a classic ending for characters who don't know if they're coming or going. This book is all about missed connections. Brodie is almost always playing catch-up. He's always a step behind or ahead and he doesn't always know it. He's even running parallel to a man with his own name in reverse, B. Jackson. Started Early is about missing siblings, lost kids, lost women, and relationships that have crossed and recrossed themselves. Some things get tidied up in a neat little package and other things are left wide open. It's not clear how the policewoman's story will end, and Jackson's phone rings with a call from the past just as the book ends. I suppose there's a good chance there'll be another Jackson Brodie book sooner or later. I hope he's still interesting.

I just enjoy Atkinson's writing. She has some great throw away lines, for example she writes about a characater's "(misplaced) faith in exclamation points," which I can relate to. She nicely, if inaccurately sets up Started Early, Took my Dog with: Later, looking back, Jackson could see that his failed appointment with Linda Pallister was the moment when it all started to go wrong. If she had kept their rendezvous he would have spent a constructive hour or so, would have felt satisfied and purposeful, and might quite possibly have undergone another evening in a hotel, eating a room-service meal and watching a bad pay-for-view movie, instead of spending a restless time, blacking out for large portions of it, and having meaningless, promiscuous sex.

Well, it's lucky for us that Linda Pallister scarpered because it gave us this story.

If you haven't read any Kate Atkinson, read One Good Turn. Everyone raves on about Case Histories, but I really didn't like the obviousness of that one and I loved her second Jackson Brodie book, One Good Turn.

***the art work version of the book is a card from my 10 year old who loved the title, sight unseen, and made me a birthday card version.***

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair

Weeeellll. Just when I get all impressed with myself for reading around 60 books a year, along comes Nina Sankovitch who spent her "year of magical reading" reading 365 books. Oh, and reviewing them. Oh, and then she wrote a book about the experience. Tolstoy and the Purple Chair (out in June) is not just one of those gimicky I-did-this-crazy-thing-and-lived books. Sankovitch is grieving and yes, we all do kind of strange things to get through pain and set ourselves back on the path to living. While at first I thought Sankovitch was a little unhinged, setting this rigorous task of reading a book a day (really? Not even a weekend off? How can you compare it to a job, if you work weekends,too? And you have a family. Oh, and you have to sit in a purple chair that vaguely stinks of cat pee?), I came to recognize that sometimes we need draconian discipline to succeed at something (see Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother--or at least, the hype about it).

The beginning of the book is difficult to read if you've ever lost someone close to you, as Nina grieves for the death of her sister, but the book is neither a sad pondering of loss nor a dull catalog of books of the "today I read this and it was great" sort. Instead, Sankovitch reads widely and weaves in the narrative her family life (both past and present). She writes "remembrance is the bones around which a body of resilience is built." She seeks in her books not only reminders of what she shared with her sister, but a guide to life, a reassurance that others have also experienced joy and love, and suffering. She reads both to forget and to remember which is a much better way to approach survival than any vice she might have picked up in the confusion after a death in the family.

I love that Sankovitch approaches her reading ecclectically, though with some hesitation. Her son, for example, hands her Watership Down and she despairs at the daunting length. She worries about gifts from friends for fear she wouldn't like the offerings and would be forced to admit so in her reviews. She solves the former problem by forcing herself to go ahead and read the 500 pages of Watership Down, and the latter by looking at the intention behind the gifts instead of at the books themselves. She takes advice from mysteries, reveling in the neatness of a solution to a puzzle (if only life were like that); she no longer avoids books with painful topics, thinking there is much to be learned; she reads kids' books; she abandons books she doesn't like and with no regret--there's so much else out there.

She gets through her year, and no she isn't "ready to relax" as a friend suggests, and surprisingly, all pleasure in reading has not been destroyed by complete and utter immersion in books. Instead, it seems, Sankovitch is able to live again, re-enter the world in a better position than when she ran frantically and aimlessly in an attempt to escape her grief. By the end of the book, Sankovitch has found some wisdom that she attempts to impart to us, about life and loss, and living, but she also--more immediately relevant, perhaps--gives us a list of books. I think we can all trust we'll find something to meet our own reading needs.

For more of Nina Sankovitch, check out her website: http://www.readallday.org/blog/.

The Radleys

Do you secretly love vampires, but prefer them not to sparkle in sunlight and fall easily in love with mortals? Perhaps you think creatures of the night should suffer from rashes and be myopic. Meat-eater, sure, but give them migraines from the lack of fresh blood. If you are bemused or annoyed by Edward Cullan's good looks, try Rowan Radley in Matt Haig's entertaining--if a little alarming--novel of modern-day vampires trying to "pass".

Peter and Helen Radley gave up the wild life of drinking blood and flying off (and I mean literally)to terribly romantic places like Prague and Paris for a feast. They no longer feel it's proper, when raising a family, to bite the neighbors (or the unsuspecting tourist or homeless wanderer). They don't even share each other's blood. All this is for the sake of the children who know nothing of what they are or where they come from.Naturally, the children are geeky and misfitting in the English suburbs and Peter and Helen have fallen into a bloodless, er, loveless marriage. So much restraint, so British, so doomed.

Their neat, uneventful, and somewhat unhappy lives are turned in an instant when daughter Clara is assaulted by a fellow student and lashes out with all she's got (and never knew she had), and guess what? She rather enjoys herself. Turns out, vampires kind of need blood to feel whole. Oh, sure abstaining has its benefits (mostly to society), but there's nothing like the power of fresh blood. Clara enjoys bringing out those sharp incisors:

She had fun in the mirror, transforming herself, watching her canine teeth lengthen andsharpen. Dracula.

Not Dracula.

Dracula.

Not Dracula.

Dracula.

She studies her curved white fangs. She touches them, presses the points in the pad of her thumb. A fat blob of blood appears, shining like a cherry. She tastes it and enjoys the moment before making herself look fully human again.

Dilemma. Dilemma. Enter Peter's brother, an infamous vampire (oh yes, there's a whole network of them, based primarily in Manchester) who brings with him not just unsavory habits but a secret from Helen's past. He claims to be there to help Clara avoid prosecution or even suspicion, but things quickly turn for the worse.

As the kids get more handsome and popular due to, um, newly developed habits, Peter and Helen's neatly-constructed world begins to crumble. In the end we have to decide if there is room for abstainers in the world of vampires and whether vampires can be part of respected British society Matt Haig makes it worth finding out with The Radleys.

American Terroir. Savoring the Flavors...

It turns out I've been making and drinking coffee all wrong. Apparently dark roast does not translate to better coffee (must be the French in me). This sad realization was the only stressful bit of information I gathered from American Terroir. Rowan Jacobsen's search for the somewhat elusive examples of terroir (taste of place) in America mostly made me want to eat better food. It also explained why my Vermont-heritage husband prefers that pale version of maple syrup called "fancy" and why hard cider isn't as common (or often as good) as the European version. I learned a ton and even plan to follow a few of the recipes Jacobsen thoughtfully includes at the end of each chapter.

The book is loosely based on a day's normal progression through meals: It starts with maple syrup and coffee and ends with cheese and chocolate with pit stops in all sorts of places and foods, like Yukon King salmon and avocados from Mexico. Jacobsen blends anecdotes with lessons about taste and history, not unlike a good wine critic. In fact, speaking of wine, he didn't make me want to trust California wines any more than I already do (or don't), but now I feel like I understand why it tends to be sweeter than European wine. I also learned some disturbing tricks and gimmicks wine makers subject our wine to. Jacobsen seems to have it in particularly for Australian wine producers, but like the coffee chapter, I may plug my ears, sing lalala and keep drinking coffee and wine the same way I always have.


Even when he's not snarking (gently) on inferior product, Jacobsen's writing is quite entertaining. The cheese chapter (Vermont) begins with: In composition and behavior, a cheese is not unlike a dead body. It starts off fresh and springy and ends up ripe and runny. And yes, that made me still want to seek out Jasper Hill cheese.


In fact, I made a list of things to try: I will seek out local honey (probably waiting for summer farmer's market to start up again), I will try Taza chocolate, Jasper Hill cheese and--with two lactose intolerant people in the family--I will definitely try the berry tartlets with avocado cream recipe. I know avocado is very fatty but it's the good kind and Jacobsen swears it can replace artery-clogging cream in baking. I'll have to get back to you all on that, but feel free to pick up your own copy of American Terroir. Savoring the Flavors of Our Woods, Waters, and Fields if you don't want to wait.

Catcher in the Rye

Reading J.D. Salinger's Catcher in the Rye as a 40 year old is a bit of a weird experience. I first read the classic in high school, of course, probably around the age of 15. I read it again in college, in a sociology class probably called something like Youth and Alienation. I noticed all the same stuff this time around. Yeah, Holden says goddamn a lot and everyone and everything is phony, and I laughed at some of the same things, like his summary of a movie he's seen. He hates movies and his explanation of the sappy story makes it sound so inane it's hard to believe such a movie existed. I've always wanted to find out if that was an actual movie. I love when he meets the friend of a date and says, "he was the kind of phony that have to give themselves room when they answer somebody's question. He stepped back, and stepped right on the lady's foot behind him. He probably broke every bone in her body." Holden does that, too, speaks all the time in a kind of synecdoche: Stepping on someone's foot and breaking every bone in her body.

That's what I noticed more this time:the writing. I wasn't so caught up in the story as I was as a teen and I wasn't reading it for a class for which I had to come in and say clever things along the lines of Holden not wanting to grow up and him catching little kids (in the rye) to keep them from losing their innocence. Instead, I noticed that every chapter ended abruptly or a bit oddly, which I liked, actually. Like: That's the terrible part. I swear to God I'm a madman. Or even better: He was strictly a pain in the ass, but he certainly had a good vocabulary. He had the largest vocabulary of any boy at Whooton when I was there. They gave us a test. End of chapter. We never hear about that kid again. I kind of like those endings; it added to the sense that Holden's mind is jittering al over the place.

I was more tuned-in to the coming mental break-down and I finally saw how Holden's problems are tied in with his brother's death. I'd been so blinded into thinking this was a book about an alienated teen, and youth tearing away from grown ups, that I'd always missed how affected Holden is by Ally's death from leukemia.

The other thing that struck me more forcefully this time was how late everything happens. I mean, I know he's in NYC, and that I'm old now, but still, doesn't anyone sleep? All of his adventures occur in about 48 hours and he sure packs a lot in. I also finally paid attention to the copyright date. This is such a 1950s book and yet it was published in 1946. I can see why it seemed like a scandalous view of a teenager then. The country is just coming out of a war in which young men became adults too soon (and often died). They gave everything for a larger cause. In contrast, Holden is loose and self-absorbed. His adventures and frankness of speech (and action) would have set a lot of adults all a twitter, adults still reeling from the loss of their hero sons and daughters. This is exactly why the book is considered a classic. It has dulled with age, but in context, you realize how ground-breaking this probably was at the time. Would a teen still care about this book today? Maybe. Holden's got a pretty good voice and speaks some truths but he is a bit of a whiner.

In the end, after a bit of resistance, I'm glad my book club chose this to read. It's made me think of going back to other books about which I have happy, shiny memories and see how they read, how they age along with me. Of course, that has all sorts of disaster potential and I have no interest in ruining good memories, but Catcher did make me realize I'm glad I'm not a teenager anymore. At the very least, I get more sleep.

**A note about the cover picture. This is not the copy I read, but I remember seeing this at an slightly older friend's house when I was 9 or 10 and she told me the book was scandalous because the teacher picks his nose (which is true!) Ah, innocence...

Skippy Dies

Paul Murray's Skippy Dies gave me more insight into adolescent boys than I ever wanted to have. As the parent of not one, but two future such creatures, I spent some time cringing over details of how 13-15 year old boys in Irish boarding schools spend their off hours, at least according to one author. The book itself is a little more cosmic than the nasty little habits of boys and Murray does try to cram a whole lot into his 661 pages and sometimes, admittedly, he lost me, but I was eager to follow his characters.

The title character does indeed die, and in the first few pages no less. Normally, this would seem like an impedement to plot, but as soon as Skippy dies, we veer back in time to another person's perspective. Murray really knows the milieu. He's got the posh school caricatures down well, the angry, possibly pedophile priest teaching French (His name rendered in French neatly emphasizes his proclivity), the ruined former athlete as coach, the middling former student returned in disgrace from his high-finance job to teach history to boys who don't care, the sexy replacement teacher (though she's just a distraction here), the excitable music teacher...etc. The list of adults goes on, none better rendered than the presumptive new head of school. He's interim and he's a lay person, unlike his ailing predecessor Father Furlong. Murray has a perfect ear for this character and perhaps captures him best. We first meet Costigan, known as the Automator, when Skippy takes ill in class. The head asks the history teacher about him:

He was involved in an incident today in Father Green's French class, an incident of vomiting...Who is this kid, Howard? Priest asks him a question, he vomits all over the place?...Apparently he likes to call himself Slippy.
What's that about? He a slippery customer, that it?
"Actually, I think it's Skippy."
"Skippy!" the Automator says derisively, "Well , that makes even less
sense!
...Set him straight... Vomiting in the classroom is definitely not something we want catching on. Time and a place for vomiting, and the classroom is not it. Think you could teach a class, Howard, with kids vomiting everywhere?"

Everything conspires to make Skippy look like he's up to something, and the Automator is always there to notice, but really, Skippy is just a geeky boy in love with the wrong girl, a girl who in turn is in love with a budding and dangerous drug dealer who, of course despises Skippy beyond all reason. Skippy is the classic geek who is less-geeky than those he hangs around with, the one you're sure will eventually grow up to be recognized as an interesting person. His brilliant friend Ruprecht doesn't seem headed quite so well into the wider world and bets are off on the rest of the little gang, but it's fascinating to eavesdrop on their lives (even if disturbing from a female parent point of view).

The story barrels along nicely until Skippy's death and then it veers terribly, terribly off-course, which is fitting. Without their glue, the gang of geeks falls apart, teachers are exposed or not for their roles in his unexpected death, love is examined and found wanting. In all, the book becomes darker and more crazed. There are moments in the resolution that are satisfying (like the final concert), and some that are a bit heavy-handed. A fire, really? If that wasn't an obvious enough symbol, there's a priest around to name it for what it is: hell fire.


But Murray knows his way around the male adolescent (and presumably quasi-boarding school life). He doesn't capture the girls and women as well, but they are symbols or obstacles, or plot devices to the story of a group of people thrown together. The putting away of childish things is more of a sad thing in the end, so I prefer to remember how Murray explains it earlier in the book, as the school boys are auditioning for a talent show/concert. The Automator envisions Pachelbel's Canon in D, the boys imagine lighting farts on stage.

Among the two-hundred plus boys, there is scarcely anyone who does not have some ability or idiosyncracy or weird body condition for which he is celebrated.
As with so many things at this particular point in their lives, though, that situation is changing by the day. School, with its endless emphasis on conformity, careers, the Future, may be partly to blame, but the key to shift in attitudes is, without a doubt, girls. Until recently the opinion of girls was of little consequence;now--overnight, almost--it is paramount; and girls have quite different, some would go so far as to say deeply conservative, criteria with regard to what constitutes a gift. They do not care how many golf balls you can fit in your mouth; they are unmoved by third nipples; they do not, most of them, consider mastery of [flaming farts] to be a feather in your cap... As the juggernaut of puberty gathers momentum, quirks and oddities and singularities turn from badges of honour to liablities to be concealed.

Skippy Dies is an interesting, if overly-long book, that starts strong but veers crazily off into a sadder reality. This is on purpose, I'm sure, and it's still a good read, but now I'm supposed to dive into Catcher in the Rye (for the third time) and I'm having trouble summoning up the courage to read about more alienated youth.