Rebecca B. (bookmuncher) - , reviewed on 4/9/2018 + 64 more book reviews

This is a memoir by a chef, rather than primarily a cooking memoir, and I enjoyed it despite a certain unevenness of tone and topic. It starts out describing her oddball upbringing in rural northwestern Pennsylvania, as the youngest of 5 children of a somewhat mismatched pair of parents, and how she largely brought herself up herself from the age of 12 after they divorced, working steadily in restaurants all through high school and beyond. She talks a little about her cooking mentors and her time in a writing program (an interlude between stints cooking), and more about her relationships, with both women and men. My favorite part was the description of the early days of her restaurant, which she called Prune from her mother's old nickname for her, even though by this point she hadn't spoken to her mother in over a decade. I could have done with a bit less about her marriage and eventual divorce from the father of her two sons (especially since her self knowledge about this part of her life seems limited; it may have been too fresh for her to write about well), but all in all, Hamilton is an engaging writer who comes across as smart and prickly but not afraid to show herself warts and all.

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