A nimbly written, alternately dark and hopeful account of dysfunction layered on dysfunction.
A fraught family memoir by the renowned chef and restaurateur.
Just a few sentences into Hamilton’s narrative, and one is instantly reminded of that Tolstoyan saw about every unhappy family being unhappy in its own way. At the start, Hamilton (Blood, Bones & Butter, 2011) is reestablishing contact with her estranged mother: “We haven’t spoken to each other in thirtyish years,” she writes, and now their roles are being reversed, the aged mother being cared for by the child. With a nod to Anne Lamott’s observation that “if people wanted you to write more warmly about them, they should’ve behaved better,” Hamilton dishes enough psyche-wounding tales to fund a battalion of therapists: a father who “did not seem hindered by the possibility of his own mediocrity”; that mother, whose vocabulary was broad and learned but always included the word “no” (“With her there were daily dozens of the regular garden-variety Mom No. But she could hit some thornier Nos in there, too, not quite as mundane”); an adventurous brother whose life spiraled downward into mental illness and suicide; another brother, “the only guy in our family with Reliable Money,” who came to an unhappy end; and much more. Hamilton is unsparing of herself, too: She confesses to having stolen away her sister’s husband in a none-too-secret affair, a turnabout for the sister’s having stolen him in the first place. She is also self-aware in sizing up the toll of injuries and sorrows to conclude, “This is not Art. Nor Anecdote. This is Life. Something to sit up straight and salvage what’s left of.” Salvage she does, in her own way, finally coming to terms with her father’s profligacy, her mother’s eccentricity, death and distance, and her own foibles—about which, on the last page of this memorable book, her mother has the last word, and a mot that couldn’t be more juste.
A nimbly written, alternately dark and hopeful account of dysfunction layered on dysfunction.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2025
ISBN: 9780399590092
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: July 17, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.
An author’s trip to Venice takes a distinctly Borgesian turn.
In November 2020, soccer club Venizia F.C. offered Nigerian American author Madu a writing residency as part of its plan “to turn the team into a global entity of fashion, culture, and sports.” Flying to Venice for the fellowship, he felt guilty about leaving his immigrant parents, who were shocked to learn upon moving to the U.S. years earlier that their Nigerian teaching certifications were invalid, forcing his father to work as a stocking clerk at Rite Aid to support the family. Madu’s experiences in Venice are incidental to what is primarily a story about his family, especially his strained relationship with his father, who was disappointed with many of his son’s choices. Unfortunately, the author’s seeming disinterest in Venice renders much of the narrative colorless. He says the trip across the Ponte della Libertà bridge was “magical,” but nothing he describes—the “endless water on both sides,” the nearby seagulls—is particularly remarkable. Little in the text conveys a sense of place or the unique character of his surroundings. Madu is at his best when he focuses on family dynamics and his observations that, in the largely deserted city, “I was one of the few Black people around.” He cites Borges, giving special note to the author’s “The House of Asterion,” in which the minotaur “explains his situation as a creature and as a creature within the labyrinth” of multiple mirrors. This notion leads to the Borgesian turn in the book’s second half, when, in an extended sequence, Madu imagines himself transformed into a minotaur, with “the head of a bull” and his body “larger, thicker, powerful but also cumbersome.” It’s an engaging passage, although stylistically out of keeping with much of what has come before.
An intriguing but uneven family memoir and travelogue.Pub Date: April 2, 2024
ISBN: 9781953368669
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Belt Publishing
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2023
Of most interest to dyed-in-the-wool lovers or haters.
“Not a Cinderella story.”
Baldwin’s loosely written memoir is about motherhood and pregnancy loss, marriage to a celebrity, being the target of gossip and criticism, the experiences of neurodivergency and bilingualism, and more. “When Alec and I met, I was twenty-seven and he was fifty-three,” she writes. “Now, it’s nearly a decade and a half later….People always ask me: What is life actually like with seven kids (and an Alec)? It’s amazing and chaotic.” This book comes on the heels of the first season of the family’s reality show, The Baldwins, seemingly designed to answer the same burning question. While the author seems like a nice, well-meaning person, one comes away from this memoir hoping the television version, with the story sculpted by professionals, is the more entertaining response. Given the fact that there has been controversy about Baldwin’s background, perhaps she should have written a straightforward autobiography. But she has not, and the reader might need to do some research to understand the nature of some of the attacks she writes about. The veracity of her Spanish identity has come under fire, as her birth name is Hilary, she was born in Boston, and is not of Latine descent—but you won’t learn those facts from this book. The author’s relative youth, her choice to have her sixth child via surrogate, and Alec Baldwin’s involvement in the death of a colleague on a film set have all been media fodder. She discusses several specific nemeses without naming them, which is not very interesting. “I grapple with the question: Why am I here in the public space? Why am I ‘relevant’? Am I here because an actor fell in love with me? Am I here because I’m a yoga teacher and have things to say about mental and physical health? Am I here because I had a lot of kids?” It’s not clear that she knows, and neither will you.
Of most interest to dyed-in-the-wool lovers or haters.Pub Date: May 6, 2025
ISBN: 9781668009987
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2025
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