Next of kin A memoir

James Beard Award winner Hamilton (Blood, Bones & Butter) serves up a nuanced and nourishing look at her idiosyncratic family. Though Hamilton's parents, sister, and three brothers were often at odds with one another, they shared the values of creativity and individuality, as well as a dislike of anything "precious." The family's sense of coherence eroded, however, when Hamilton's older brother Jeffrey hanged himself at age 57. The tragedy spurred Hamilton to rethink her family's dynamics and revisit a childhood marked by adventure, but also chaos and neglect. Hamilton's father, a set builder turned restaurateur, was competitive with his children, choosing his own tap-dancing recital over Jeffrey's college graduation; her mother became a glamorous recluse in her later years, "like a docent in a museum of herself." Her family's inflated self-image, Hamilton comes to understand, warped her perception of such episodes from her life as stealing the family car at 13, having an affair with her sister's husband as an adult, and clinging to a bad marriage by describing it to herself as "unconventional." Hamilton is hardly the first writer to find deep sorrow beneath her family's glittering facade, but the vivid detail of her scenes and her rigorous pursuit of the truth feel revelatory. Layered, moving, and funny, this is a must-read. Agent: Kim Witherspoon, InkWell Management. (Oct.)

In this memoir, chef Hamilton (Prune: A Cookbook) examines her contentious relationships with her family. From a young age, Hamilton both idolized and struggled to connect with her charismatic, nonconformist, unsentimental parents and her four older siblings, each with their own particular flair. As an adult, Hamilton climbed to fantastic success as a chef and author of bestselling cookbooks, but her family bonds only continued to deteriorate, until she was estranged from all of them. Here, Hamilton examines what fractured her family unit, including death and other tragedies, and attempts to make sense of these breakages by revisiting old memories. Naturally, her and her family's recollections of events differ, and Hamilton reflects on the role of facts in storytelling and the differing accounts that arise from diverging memories. Hamilton's discussion of the fallibility of memory is particularly poignant in her search for answers regarding her oldest brother's suicide. She employs varied storytelling methods and vivid descriptions to envision the event and make sense of the loss. VERDICT A compelling memoir that interrogates what makes family so complicated.--Rebekah Kati

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 amot that couldn't be morejuste. A nimbly written, alternately dark and hopeful account of dysfunction layered on dysfunction. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.