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Next of Kin: A Memoir
An electrifying memoir about the demise of a singular family—a stunning new book by Gabrielle Hamilton, author of the New York Times bestseller and James Beard Award winner Blood, Bones & Butter
“We were a family veined through with certain brutalities, rifts, and unresolved conflicts, as well as some remarkable violences and some decades-long silences. But together we had rituals, systems, congruent cohering events that made us who we were as one. I thought of the black and blue marks as if they were the desirable spores of mold found in noble cheeses.”
The youngest of five children, Gabrielle Hamilton took pride in her unsentimental, idiosyncratic family. She idolized her parents’ charisma and non-conformity. She worshipped her siblings’ mischievousness and flair. Hers was a family with no fondness for the humdrum.
Hamilton grew up to find enormous success, first as a chef and then as the author of award-winning, bestselling books. But her family ties frayed in ways both seismic and mundane until eventually she was estranged from them all. In the wake of one brother’s sudden death and another’s suicide, while raising young children of her own, Hamilton was compelled to examine the sprawling, complicated root system underlying her losses. She began investigating her family’s devout independence and individualism with a nearly forensic rigor, soon discovering a sobering warning in their long-held self-satisfaction. By the time she was called to care for her declining mother—the mother she’d seen only twice in thirty years—Hamilton had realized a certain freedom, one made possible only through a careful psychological autopsy of her family.
Hamilton’s gift for pungent dialogue, propulsive storytelling, intense honesty, and raucous humor made her first book a classic of modern memoir. In Next of Kin, she offers a keen and compassionate portrait of the people she grew up with and the prevailing but soon-to-falter ethos of the era that produced them. A personal account of one family’s disintegration, Next of Kin is also a universal story of the emotional clarity that comes from scrutinizing our family mythologies and seeing through to the other side.
“We were a family veined through with certain brutalities, rifts, and unresolved conflicts, as well as some remarkable violences and some decades-long silences. But together we had rituals, systems, congruent cohering events that made us who we were as one. I thought of the black and blue marks as if they were the desirable spores of mold found in noble cheeses.”
The youngest of five children, Gabrielle Hamilton took pride in her unsentimental, idiosyncratic family. She idolized her parents’ charisma and non-conformity. She worshipped her siblings’ mischievousness and flair. Hers was a family with no fondness for the humdrum.
Hamilton grew up to find enormous success, first as a chef and then as the author of award-winning, bestselling books. But her family ties frayed in ways both seismic and mundane until eventually she was estranged from them all. In the wake of one brother’s sudden death and another’s suicide, while raising young children of her own, Hamilton was compelled to examine the sprawling, complicated root system underlying her losses. She began investigating her family’s devout independence and individualism with a nearly forensic rigor, soon discovering a sobering warning in their long-held self-satisfaction. By the time she was called to care for her declining mother—the mother she’d seen only twice in thirty years—Hamilton had realized a certain freedom, one made possible only through a careful psychological autopsy of her family.
Hamilton’s gift for pungent dialogue, propulsive storytelling, intense honesty, and raucous humor made her first book a classic of modern memoir. In Next of Kin, she offers a keen and compassionate portrait of the people she grew up with and the prevailing but soon-to-falter ethos of the era that produced them. A personal account of one family’s disintegration, Next of Kin is also a universal story of the emotional clarity that comes from scrutinizing our family mythologies and seeing through to the other side.
288 pages, Hardcover
Published October 14, 2025
202 people are currently reading
6955 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 134 reviews
November 1, 2025
I was a huge fan of Hamilton's restaurant, Prune, I ate there for years when I was in town, and when I moved back to the city in 2018, I went often until it closed in 2020. I also like Hamilton's engrossing, somehow elegiac food writing very much. In every medium, Hamilton is an extraordinary writer.
I have now read both of her memoirs, and in addition to the exceptional craft, I have been impressed with her willingness to lay herself as bare as is possible, to be as honest with the reader as she is with herself (often that is not very honest.) Since her last book, Blood, Bones and Butter, Hamilton has clearly been well therapized. She sees herself far more clearly than she did nearly 25 years ago. She makes some eye-opening observations that are not just interesting, but which made me see my reality differently. She has plenty of blind spots, but they do not damage the value of anything recounted.
I come from a family very unlike Hamilton's artsy off-the-grid clan, but also very like her family in the sense that we hide all of our truths, covering them with humor. This mode of making it through the world has its moments, but it is not a recipe for enriching relationships or a generally satisfying life. It is hard to bond when you spend all your time spackling over discomfort and steering people away from awkwardness. I have worked hard to be part of dynamics rather than insisting on being the center of all things, to lean toward the honest rather than the charming, to feel emotional pain more fully. I have met with limited success, but I think I can boast of slightly more success than Hamilton. Even as she works through her family relationships, she moves to unhealthy points of view, looking at every connection as if people have paid into some invisible ante, and someone wins and others lose. She sees how deleterious her conversations with her mother are, and simply stops talking to her for 30 years. There is no fracturing event (as there is with her sister), just a cognizance that her mother is not the person she wants her to be. She never thinks about whether having the relationship has worth to weigh against the unpleasantness, or whether there are things that might lead to some repair. She never thinks that leaving a woman alone in the world, a woman who has failed, but tried, to care for her 5 children, might be morally or ethically wrong. She focuses on the bad parts of relationships and excises them like tumors, taking out extra to get clear margins. She ends up estranged from both parents and all of her siblings, other than one who died quite young (before she could disown him, perhaps) and with whom she spoke rarely and at a surface level. When one sibling (whom she is not in touch with) dies by suicide, she carries out an investigation to find out who is at fault, and clears others of blame (almost against her will -- she clearly wanted her mother to be at fault), but never investigates whether her severance from that mentally ill sibling might have intensified his feeling of being without resources. (Which is not to say she is to blame. Suicide is the choice of the actor, period. Still, if we are paying into a family ante, cutting off all contact with family has to go into the pot.) But all this is part of the story, the exceptionally thoughtful, well-told, confronting tale. We are not here to judge Hamilton the human, whose frailties we know about because she was brave enough to commit them to the page, but Hamilton the historian and writer. This is what a memoir should look like.
I listened to this read by the author, and it was great.
I have now read both of her memoirs, and in addition to the exceptional craft, I have been impressed with her willingness to lay herself as bare as is possible, to be as honest with the reader as she is with herself (often that is not very honest.) Since her last book, Blood, Bones and Butter, Hamilton has clearly been well therapized. She sees herself far more clearly than she did nearly 25 years ago. She makes some eye-opening observations that are not just interesting, but which made me see my reality differently. She has plenty of blind spots, but they do not damage the value of anything recounted.
I come from a family very unlike Hamilton's artsy off-the-grid clan, but also very like her family in the sense that we hide all of our truths, covering them with humor. This mode of making it through the world has its moments, but it is not a recipe for enriching relationships or a generally satisfying life. It is hard to bond when you spend all your time spackling over discomfort and steering people away from awkwardness. I have worked hard to be part of dynamics rather than insisting on being the center of all things, to lean toward the honest rather than the charming, to feel emotional pain more fully. I have met with limited success, but I think I can boast of slightly more success than Hamilton. Even as she works through her family relationships, she moves to unhealthy points of view, looking at every connection as if people have paid into some invisible ante, and someone wins and others lose. She sees how deleterious her conversations with her mother are, and simply stops talking to her for 30 years. There is no fracturing event (as there is with her sister), just a cognizance that her mother is not the person she wants her to be. She never thinks about whether having the relationship has worth to weigh against the unpleasantness, or whether there are things that might lead to some repair. She never thinks that leaving a woman alone in the world, a woman who has failed, but tried, to care for her 5 children, might be morally or ethically wrong. She focuses on the bad parts of relationships and excises them like tumors, taking out extra to get clear margins. She ends up estranged from both parents and all of her siblings, other than one who died quite young (before she could disown him, perhaps) and with whom she spoke rarely and at a surface level. When one sibling (whom she is not in touch with) dies by suicide, she carries out an investigation to find out who is at fault, and clears others of blame (almost against her will -- she clearly wanted her mother to be at fault), but never investigates whether her severance from that mentally ill sibling might have intensified his feeling of being without resources. (Which is not to say she is to blame. Suicide is the choice of the actor, period. Still, if we are paying into a family ante, cutting off all contact with family has to go into the pot.) But all this is part of the story, the exceptionally thoughtful, well-told, confronting tale. We are not here to judge Hamilton the human, whose frailties we know about because she was brave enough to commit them to the page, but Hamilton the historian and writer. This is what a memoir should look like.
I listened to this read by the author, and it was great.
July 23, 2025
I received a free copy of, Next of Kin, by Gabrielle Hamilton, from the publisher and Netgalley in exchange for an honest review. Gabrielle Hamilton is a chef and author, I have honestly never heard of her before reading this book. This is a memoir about her pretty dysfunctional family. This book was sad to me, not the nicest people in the world, but every family has their own problems.
August 10, 2025
At the end of my 2011 review of Gabrielle Hamilton's first memoir, Blood, Bone and Butter, I remark that her relationship with her family is worth a book itself. Well, this is that book. She honestly and generously gives her account of the implosion of a family of seven, at times quite challenging with what may be perceived as a surfeit of personal detail. Still, reading such accounts rooted in reality makes it difficult for me to read fictionalized family sagas.
August 24, 2025
Hamilton is an accomplished restauranteur, writer and television commentator. Yet beneath all of this is the wreckage of a childhood that she has spent most of her life trying to understand and overcome. Growing up in a rambling old house with four brothers and sisters, she had parents who were often indifferent and even hostile to their children.
Her father designed sets for the theatre and stores. He chose this career because it was clear, to him, that he would never make it as an artist, what he had dreamed of doing. For the rest of his life he. made it clear to his children that there was no acceptable substitute for being the best. A corollary to this rule was that they could not surpass their father in their own lives. He is a narcissist par excellence.
Her mother, aside from a brief period of time when they were young, was at best largely indifferent to her children's welfare and at worst violent with them. She ultimately picks herself up, divorces her husband and moves to Vermont. She brings young Gabrielle and her older brother Simon with her where they last but one school year and are brought back to New Jersey where they live lives which could only be described as feral.
As adults the family members more often than not enemies. They go years and even decades without speaking. Even death barely makes a dent in this permanent antipathy which has its roots in their childhoods.
The Hamilton family is what this memoir is about and Hamilton sticks rigidly within this boundary. The reader is left to wonder why she chose to run a restaurant, why she married, why she divorced, why she married again, why she writes. This leaves the impression that we are viewing brief flashes of the story without delving into how her family affected the rest of her life.
Hamilton is a wonderful writer who fills the pages with vivid, lively prose. Despite the lacunae in the story, this is a story well worth buying and reading.
Her father designed sets for the theatre and stores. He chose this career because it was clear, to him, that he would never make it as an artist, what he had dreamed of doing. For the rest of his life he. made it clear to his children that there was no acceptable substitute for being the best. A corollary to this rule was that they could not surpass their father in their own lives. He is a narcissist par excellence.
Her mother, aside from a brief period of time when they were young, was at best largely indifferent to her children's welfare and at worst violent with them. She ultimately picks herself up, divorces her husband and moves to Vermont. She brings young Gabrielle and her older brother Simon with her where they last but one school year and are brought back to New Jersey where they live lives which could only be described as feral.
As adults the family members more often than not enemies. They go years and even decades without speaking. Even death barely makes a dent in this permanent antipathy which has its roots in their childhoods.
The Hamilton family is what this memoir is about and Hamilton sticks rigidly within this boundary. The reader is left to wonder why she chose to run a restaurant, why she married, why she divorced, why she married again, why she writes. This leaves the impression that we are viewing brief flashes of the story without delving into how her family affected the rest of her life.
Hamilton is a wonderful writer who fills the pages with vivid, lively prose. Despite the lacunae in the story, this is a story well worth buying and reading.
December 27, 2025
Gabrielle Hamilton is an American chef, restaurateur, and writer; she's previously published a number of books related to her culinary career, including a 2011 memoir Blood, Bones, and Butter: The Inadvertent Education of a Reluctant Chef. Her 2025 memoir Next of Kin focuses on her messy family dynamics as she comes to terms with the suicide of her older brother and decline of her parents, with whom she had a complicated relationship. The writing in this memoir is vivid and nuanced, though as the book continues, I began to question the reliability of the narrator as several factors didn't add up. This was particularly evident when Hamilton discussed how she began a short, now-over affair with her sister's husband that led to the breakup of their long-time marriage, but this was somehow justified because she had dated that man before her sister married him, which ended because he cheated on her with her sister (wtf). Though Hamilton's parents don't sound like they were perfect people (particularly her outwardly happy-go-lucky, but inwardly bitter, father), one wonders how much of the rancor and estrangement was due to pervasive dysfunction and immaturity by all parties, and what else isn't being mentioned. I generally have mixed feelings on these types of memoirs overall, as airing one's family's dirty laundry for public consumption is never a net positive.
My statistics:
Book 377 for 2025
Book 2303 cumulatively
My statistics:
Book 377 for 2025
Book 2303 cumulatively
January 6, 2026
Heart wrenching reflection on family, mental health, and healing from inter generational trauma. Wish I knew more about the authors professional life but she’s clearly a phenomenal writer.
November 19, 2025
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
Next of Kin is a memoir about family, mental health, and the long shadows parents cast on our lives. Hamilton writes honestly about her imperfect family and the complicated relationships that shaped her.
Trigger warning - this book does deal with suicide, but Hamilton handles these moments with sensitivity while still being direct about their impact. The emotional weight of the story is strong, but the writing makes it easy to stay connected. Hamilton’s style is clear, thoughtful, and quietly gripping. I finished this book within two days.
If you’re drawn to memoirs about resilience, family wounds, and finding yourself in the aftermath, this one is worth reading.
September 21, 2025
This is a memoir similar to The Glass Castle in that it describes growing up in an extremely disfunctional family. The prose is beautiful; I REALLY like her writing style. I underlined a bunch of sentences and was occasionally moved to tears.
She writes about her parents with sharp insight, as well as her siblings to an extent.
My big issue with this memoir is that she does not at all seem to be as sharp and insightful about herself. She will offhandedly mention something she did or said, and it would leave my jaw on the floor.
Example and also TW for suicide. She wrestles for years with something she thinks her mom might have done that might have contributed to her brother's suicide. Yet she offhandedly mentions how something SHE did also very much affected him...yet somehow never questions if she also helped drive him to that decision. Obviously perhaps neither should be blamed. Its just that kind of sharpness about everyone else and yet a casualness about her own errors that feels hypocritical to me.
I kept hoping she would show growth by the end of the memoir, but I didn't see it.
Well, I take that back. I think she did grow in accepting how dysfunctional her family is and was, instead of taking pride in it like she was taught to as a child.
I just don't think she grew out of taking pride (or at least giving herself an extra helping of acceptance) for her own dysfunction.
(I received this ARC from a Goodreads giveaway. All thoughts and opinions are my own.)
She writes about her parents with sharp insight, as well as her siblings to an extent.
My big issue with this memoir is that she does not at all seem to be as sharp and insightful about herself. She will offhandedly mention something she did or said, and it would leave my jaw on the floor.
Example and also TW for suicide. She wrestles for years with something she thinks her mom might have done that might have contributed to her brother's suicide. Yet she offhandedly mentions how something SHE did also very much affected him...yet somehow never questions if she also helped drive him to that decision. Obviously perhaps neither should be blamed. Its just that kind of sharpness about everyone else and yet a casualness about her own errors that feels hypocritical to me.
I kept hoping she would show growth by the end of the memoir, but I didn't see it.
Well, I take that back. I think she did grow in accepting how dysfunctional her family is and was, instead of taking pride in it like she was taught to as a child.
I just don't think she grew out of taking pride (or at least giving herself an extra helping of acceptance) for her own dysfunction.
(I received this ARC from a Goodreads giveaway. All thoughts and opinions are my own.)
October 7, 2025
I started reading this hurriedly and did not realize it was autobiographical until halfway through, and even then I thought no, who would be so brutally honest, volunteering to present such a story of self? But that would be Gabrielle Hamilton, inordinately funny to read, even when the subject matter is her squeamish-making family lore.
I like how she lists the creative nicknames of her family members, and how evocative that proves to be for each of them, beginning with her eldest brother Jeffrey aka JJ Bones, whose death is the framework for Next of Kin, like a skeleton. I lost a beloved family member to hanging too, so I know the shock and nuance that compounds a death like that, and truly appreciate the way Hamilton gives us Jeffrey's story; but it was difficult for me to read her reaction to her brother Todd's sudden dying, with what I took for clinical underwhelm.
While reading the book I was a bit put off by how little regard these 7 family members seemed to hold for feelings or niceties; but I guess that's kind of their schtick, "the Good-Humored, Hardworking, Sleeve-Rolling, Realistic, Truth-Confronting Hamiltons," and it grew on me. I came to appreciate how much the survivors overcame, the efforts made to heal what was salvageable, and the sheer bravery this author shows in sharing the tale. This book is deep and layered, it is not chronological or logical but it is moving and lovely in its own way.
I like how she lists the creative nicknames of her family members, and how evocative that proves to be for each of them, beginning with her eldest brother Jeffrey aka JJ Bones, whose death is the framework for Next of Kin, like a skeleton. I lost a beloved family member to hanging too, so I know the shock and nuance that compounds a death like that, and truly appreciate the way Hamilton gives us Jeffrey's story; but it was difficult for me to read her reaction to her brother Todd's sudden dying, with what I took for clinical underwhelm.
While reading the book I was a bit put off by how little regard these 7 family members seemed to hold for feelings or niceties; but I guess that's kind of their schtick, "the Good-Humored, Hardworking, Sleeve-Rolling, Realistic, Truth-Confronting Hamiltons," and it grew on me. I came to appreciate how much the survivors overcame, the efforts made to heal what was salvageable, and the sheer bravery this author shows in sharing the tale. This book is deep and layered, it is not chronological or logical but it is moving and lovely in its own way.
December 11, 2025
Writing: 5 stars!
Whole Thing, After Some Thought: 3.5 stars
If you love a family story with creative people at the helm, living their own special way, of inherited dysfunctional ways of relating… you’ll love this right off the bat.
I was all set to recommend the heck out of this to my core crew of fellow “families and feelings” insatiable memoir readers who appreciate this type of dishy reading experience when… about 75 percent of the way through, the luster wore off and the sadness of Gabrielle’s cumulative series of estrangements set in heavy on me.
I love reading books by Scorpios, and Gabrielle is one through and through. (And it’s ok with me if you don’t believe in astrology :) She is intuitive, even though she says she isn’t. Her level of detail remembering the past is dazzling. She’s funny, she’s got a quick wit, and it makes for happy, page turning reading. She’s also sharp with those pincers, and feels things with burning intensity, which can be jarring as a casual bystander reader. Hanging out with a Scorpio nonstop as I did reading this book, kept me cracking up at the good times, but ultimately left feeling kind of sapped with all the problems that her family’s distance over the years caused. Three quarters of the way through the book, I started thinking about the problem of the unreliable narrator. For instance, I know a lot about how her parents behaved less than ideally over the years, but I couldn’t help but think about the omissions of accounting for some of her behavior over the years. Like, that catastrophic affair with her brother in law… just… inevitable?
Complicated. Messy. Sad. But still, so interesting. I wish things had been simpler for Gabrielle and her family. I look forward to reading more by her.
Whole Thing, After Some Thought: 3.5 stars
If you love a family story with creative people at the helm, living their own special way, of inherited dysfunctional ways of relating… you’ll love this right off the bat.
I was all set to recommend the heck out of this to my core crew of fellow “families and feelings” insatiable memoir readers who appreciate this type of dishy reading experience when… about 75 percent of the way through, the luster wore off and the sadness of Gabrielle’s cumulative series of estrangements set in heavy on me.
I love reading books by Scorpios, and Gabrielle is one through and through. (And it’s ok with me if you don’t believe in astrology :) She is intuitive, even though she says she isn’t. Her level of detail remembering the past is dazzling. She’s funny, she’s got a quick wit, and it makes for happy, page turning reading. She’s also sharp with those pincers, and feels things with burning intensity, which can be jarring as a casual bystander reader. Hanging out with a Scorpio nonstop as I did reading this book, kept me cracking up at the good times, but ultimately left feeling kind of sapped with all the problems that her family’s distance over the years caused. Three quarters of the way through the book, I started thinking about the problem of the unreliable narrator. For instance, I know a lot about how her parents behaved less than ideally over the years, but I couldn’t help but think about the omissions of accounting for some of her behavior over the years. Like, that catastrophic affair with her brother in law… just… inevitable?
Complicated. Messy. Sad. But still, so interesting. I wish things had been simpler for Gabrielle and her family. I look forward to reading more by her.
Read
November 30, 2025No
A book I borrowed from the library to try before I buy (tired buying hundreds books and hating half)
I do not rate these “tested”
books. This is really for me. I will not be buying, reading borrowing this book.
I read first ch or more -first 10-100 pages skim around at times. I read many of my GR friend’s reviews. This is what I did and didn’t like:
Hate the orange cover
I tried to read this before reviewing. I didn’t like it right away. The writing feels distant and dry. One reviewer said it perfectly:
“sharp, unsentimental, not very cohesive. It is more meandering and introspective, at times to the point of feeling closed off. The themes-family (chosen and otherwise), aging, duty, and estrangement-are compelling, and there are moving moments, Still, I found the pacing slow, and at times the narrative felt stuck in its own head”
A book I borrowed from the library to try before I buy (tired buying hundreds books and hating half)
I do not rate these “tested”
books. This is really for me. I will not be buying, reading borrowing this book.
I read first ch or more -first 10-100 pages skim around at times. I read many of my GR friend’s reviews. This is what I did and didn’t like:
Hate the orange cover
I tried to read this before reviewing. I didn’t like it right away. The writing feels distant and dry. One reviewer said it perfectly:
“sharp, unsentimental, not very cohesive. It is more meandering and introspective, at times to the point of feeling closed off. The themes-family (chosen and otherwise), aging, duty, and estrangement-are compelling, and there are moving moments, Still, I found the pacing slow, and at times the narrative felt stuck in its own head”
January 10, 2026
I happen to love her writing, so no matter the subject-she will always be a 5. Searingly honest and at points her narrative almost too bright to read, this is an open dialogue with herself about her upbringing-myths, reality and construction. I throughly enjoyed it.
January 22, 2026
Through key memories and interactions, Hamilton examines her eccentric, dysfunctional family. She seeks an honest assessment of character—-of her parents, her siblings, and even herself. Her writing is unflinching, riveting, at times poetic, but there are no heroes in this book.
December 2, 2025
I liked her first book because it was about cooking, but she just comes off as even more insufferable in this one.
December 28, 2025
4.5 One of my best reads of 2025. Hamilton has such a way of capturing her family, that it makes me want, long to be a better writer. A writer of any sort.
Read
December 29, 2025DNF- for a couple of reasons I absolutely could not connect with Hamilton which made reading her memoir difficult to enjoy. But she can certainly write!
January 3, 2026
I loved the similarities with her birth order and mine in a large family; but realized quickly Hamilton's parents and siblings did not take the care needed to sustain loving family relationships.
January 25, 2026
There’s a lot of jumping around, and I feel like a piece or two is missing, but the writing is so good.
Read
December 9, 2025the goat returns for one more...
January 28, 2026
... Laurence Durrel, little bit Colette, big bit Henry Miller.
December 20, 2025
Another dysfunctional-family memoir. Great writing.
November 3, 2025
4.75 - could not stop reading. Read in one day. Beautiful writing.
If you haven’t read Blood, Bones, and Butter - her first memoir- read that first. You will be in for a great book weekend!
If you haven’t read Blood, Bones, and Butter - her first memoir- read that first. You will be in for a great book weekend!
October 11, 2025
This memoir dwelled on the aftermath of a tattered family. A memoir of betrayal and self-destruction of a family, at each member’s hands. This was a stirring insight into parents who could never admit fault, and children who bore the burden of this for years to come, in various ways. Gabrielle Hamilton is a chef and an author, and provided this very real and emotional memoir of a family who never see each other through the same eyes, and continue to disintegrate until the bitter end. After being estranged and the damage done, it is at a point in time when she was asked to care for her mother that he was able to work through the psychological haze of it all.
Gabrielle grew up with her mother, father and the youngest of five children, all independent individual in nature and soul. Her parents were unlike other she knew, enigmatic and carefree. But this charming nature came with a price: there was no yardstick these children could ever measure up to, and no success of these children could ever be greater than that of their parent’s excellence, which was mediocre at best. Her father was narcissistic, her mother indifferent and inconsequential. When her parents separated and her mother left the family home, each child was literally left to fend for themselves. And it is this isolating upbringing that set the wheels in motion for disaster for all of them. Becoming adults, they were disillusioned and distanced from each other. All of the things that should have brought them closer created distance, heightened antagonism and indignation between the siblings. The death of her two brothers – a suicide and a sudden death – created more ripples in a complicated family, on top of her own marriage and family struggles.
This memoir revealed the profound impact of parents who refused to acknowledge their harm. For Gabrielle, writing her own story, it became not just a recounting of events, but a confrontation with a legacy of denial, dysfunction, and emotional abandonment. The absence of genuine remorse from her narcissistic or authoritarian parents left their children to bear the full weight of unresolved trauma. Gabrielle’s parents manipulated, gaslit, and played the victim to avoid accountability, offering false apologies or nothing at all, resulting in an unsafe, unacknowledged, and profoundly shaping childhood and adolescence. There is no seeking of comfort, but there is some clarity and acceptance that it was okay to stop protecting everyone who never protected her. This memoir is a testament to resilience and a form of resistance against the silence imposed by parental power, where Gabrielle could reclaim her own voice, and refused to carry the emotional burden any longer.
Gabrielle grew up with her mother, father and the youngest of five children, all independent individual in nature and soul. Her parents were unlike other she knew, enigmatic and carefree. But this charming nature came with a price: there was no yardstick these children could ever measure up to, and no success of these children could ever be greater than that of their parent’s excellence, which was mediocre at best. Her father was narcissistic, her mother indifferent and inconsequential. When her parents separated and her mother left the family home, each child was literally left to fend for themselves. And it is this isolating upbringing that set the wheels in motion for disaster for all of them. Becoming adults, they were disillusioned and distanced from each other. All of the things that should have brought them closer created distance, heightened antagonism and indignation between the siblings. The death of her two brothers – a suicide and a sudden death – created more ripples in a complicated family, on top of her own marriage and family struggles.
This memoir revealed the profound impact of parents who refused to acknowledge their harm. For Gabrielle, writing her own story, it became not just a recounting of events, but a confrontation with a legacy of denial, dysfunction, and emotional abandonment. The absence of genuine remorse from her narcissistic or authoritarian parents left their children to bear the full weight of unresolved trauma. Gabrielle’s parents manipulated, gaslit, and played the victim to avoid accountability, offering false apologies or nothing at all, resulting in an unsafe, unacknowledged, and profoundly shaping childhood and adolescence. There is no seeking of comfort, but there is some clarity and acceptance that it was okay to stop protecting everyone who never protected her. This memoir is a testament to resilience and a form of resistance against the silence imposed by parental power, where Gabrielle could reclaim her own voice, and refused to carry the emotional burden any longer.
July 9, 2025
I requested Next of Kin from NetGalley solely because I thought I might enjoy a memoir written by a chef, but I knew nothing about Gabrielle Hamilton. I should have started with her first memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter as that one was more becoming a chef and opening her restaurant. The best way I can describe this book is that it is sharp, unsentimental, but not very cohesive. It is more meandering and introspective, at times to the point of feeling closed off. I might know a little bit more about Hamilton after reading Next of Kin but not much.
The themes—family (chosen and otherwise), aging, duty, and estrangement—are compelling, and there are moving moments, particularly when Hamilton explores the unspoken bonds and emotional labor that come with caring for someone out of obligation rather than affection. Still, I found the pacing slow, and at times the narrative felt stuck in its own head, circling the same emotional territory without offering new insight. I admired the honesty, but I also felt like I was being kept at arm’s length.
One moment that especially stayed with me involved the death of one of Hamilton’s siblings by suicide. Their father’s reaction—"Well, if you have to lose one, at least it's the one you liked least"—was staggering. Hamilton’s response, “I had known, of course I had, that we were ranked,” is chilling in its quiet acceptance. I can’t begin to understand what it would be like to grow up in a family like that. My own experience with family offers no frame of reference for that kind of hierarchy or cruelty, and I found myself wondering what kind of people her parents really were.
That said, Hamilton’s prose is often incisive, and readers who enjoy character-driven, reflective nonfiction might find more to appreciate here than I did. A worthwhile but uneven read.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on October 14, 2025.
The themes—family (chosen and otherwise), aging, duty, and estrangement—are compelling, and there are moving moments, particularly when Hamilton explores the unspoken bonds and emotional labor that come with caring for someone out of obligation rather than affection. Still, I found the pacing slow, and at times the narrative felt stuck in its own head, circling the same emotional territory without offering new insight. I admired the honesty, but I also felt like I was being kept at arm’s length.
One moment that especially stayed with me involved the death of one of Hamilton’s siblings by suicide. Their father’s reaction—"Well, if you have to lose one, at least it's the one you liked least"—was staggering. Hamilton’s response, “I had known, of course I had, that we were ranked,” is chilling in its quiet acceptance. I can’t begin to understand what it would be like to grow up in a family like that. My own experience with family offers no frame of reference for that kind of hierarchy or cruelty, and I found myself wondering what kind of people her parents really were.
That said, Hamilton’s prose is often incisive, and readers who enjoy character-driven, reflective nonfiction might find more to appreciate here than I did. A worthwhile but uneven read.
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on October 14, 2025.
November 27, 2025
Families are complicated. Coming from a dysfunctional family myself made this book very personal. It made reflect on how much my family was the same. I was the youngest of eight, parents divorced, mental illness, drug and alcohol abuse, physical and verbal abuse, suicide, disowning members of the family, chaos but along side that I did feel love from my parents.
I love Gabby’s honest review of her life growing up in the not so pleasant environment.
Great introspection! Well written and it is making me reflect on my own upbringing
I love Gabby’s honest review of her life growing up in the not so pleasant environment.
Great introspection! Well written and it is making me reflect on my own upbringing
November 6, 2025
📚Next of Kin
✍🏻Gabrielle Hamilton
Blurb:
An electrifying memoir about the demise of a singular family—a stunning new book by Gabrielle Hamilton, author of the New York Times bestseller and James Beard Award winner Blood, Bones & Butter
“We were a family veined through with certain brutalities, rifts, and unresolved conflicts, as well as some remarkable violences and some decades-long silences. But together we had rituals, systems, congruent cohering events that made us who we were as one. I thought of the black and blue marks as if they were the desirable spores of mold found in noble cheeses.”
The youngest of five children, Gabrielle Hamilton took pride in her unsentimental, idiosyncratic family. She idolized her parents’ charisma and non-conformity. She worshipped her siblings’ mischievousness and flair. Hers was a family with no fondness for the humdrum.
Hamilton grew up to find enormous success, first as a chef and then as the author of award-winning, bestselling books. But her family ties frayed in ways both seismic and mundane until eventually she was estranged from them all. In the wake of one brother’s sudden death and another’s suicide, while raising young children of her own, Hamilton was compelled to examine the sprawling, complicated root system underlying her losses. She began investigating her family’s devout independence and individualism with a nearly forensic rigor, soon discovering a sobering warning in their long-held self-satisfaction. By the time she was called to care for her declining mother—the mother she’d seen only twice in thirty years—Hamilton had realized a certain freedom, one made possible only through a careful psychological autopsy of her family.
Hamilton’s gift for pungent dialogue, propulsive storytelling, intense honesty, and raucous humor made her first book a classic of modern memoir. In Next of Kin, she offers a keen and compassionate portrait of the people she grew up with and the prevailing but soon-to-falter ethos of the era that produced them. A personal account of one family’s disintegration, Next of Kin is also a universal story of the emotional clarity that comes from scrutinizing our family mythologies and seeing through to the other side.
My Thoughts:
This memoir is written in such a fresh, compulsive style that I was instantly drawn in and held spellbound. She honestly and generously gives her account of the implosion of a family of seven, at times quite challenging with what may be perceived as a surfeit of personal detail. I was captivated by the chaos and drama of one family.
Gabrielle grew up with her mother, father and the youngest of five children, all independent individual in nature and soul. Her parents were unlike other she knew, enigmatic and carefree. But this charming nature came with a price: there was no yardstick these children could ever measure up to, and no success of these children could ever be greater than that of their parent’s excellence, which was mediocre at best. Her father was narcissistic, her mother indifferent and inconsequential. When her parents separated and her mother left the family home, each child was literally left to fend for themselves. And it is this isolating upbringing that set the wheels in motion for disaster for all of them. Becoming adults, they were disillusioned and distanced from each other. All of the things that should have brought them closer created distance, heightened antagonism and indignation between the siblings. The death of her two brothers – a suicide and a sudden death – created more ripples in a complicated family, on top of her own marriage and family struggles. This was a good book, I didn't realize it was a memoir when I clicked on the book for approval, I'm so glad I did.
Thanks NetGalley, Random House Publishing and Author Gabrielle Hamilton for the copy of "Next of Kin", I am leaving my review in appreciation
#NetGalley
#RandomHouse
#NextofKin
#GabrielleHamilton
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
✍🏻Gabrielle Hamilton
Blurb:
An electrifying memoir about the demise of a singular family—a stunning new book by Gabrielle Hamilton, author of the New York Times bestseller and James Beard Award winner Blood, Bones & Butter
“We were a family veined through with certain brutalities, rifts, and unresolved conflicts, as well as some remarkable violences and some decades-long silences. But together we had rituals, systems, congruent cohering events that made us who we were as one. I thought of the black and blue marks as if they were the desirable spores of mold found in noble cheeses.”
The youngest of five children, Gabrielle Hamilton took pride in her unsentimental, idiosyncratic family. She idolized her parents’ charisma and non-conformity. She worshipped her siblings’ mischievousness and flair. Hers was a family with no fondness for the humdrum.
Hamilton grew up to find enormous success, first as a chef and then as the author of award-winning, bestselling books. But her family ties frayed in ways both seismic and mundane until eventually she was estranged from them all. In the wake of one brother’s sudden death and another’s suicide, while raising young children of her own, Hamilton was compelled to examine the sprawling, complicated root system underlying her losses. She began investigating her family’s devout independence and individualism with a nearly forensic rigor, soon discovering a sobering warning in their long-held self-satisfaction. By the time she was called to care for her declining mother—the mother she’d seen only twice in thirty years—Hamilton had realized a certain freedom, one made possible only through a careful psychological autopsy of her family.
Hamilton’s gift for pungent dialogue, propulsive storytelling, intense honesty, and raucous humor made her first book a classic of modern memoir. In Next of Kin, she offers a keen and compassionate portrait of the people she grew up with and the prevailing but soon-to-falter ethos of the era that produced them. A personal account of one family’s disintegration, Next of Kin is also a universal story of the emotional clarity that comes from scrutinizing our family mythologies and seeing through to the other side.
My Thoughts:
This memoir is written in such a fresh, compulsive style that I was instantly drawn in and held spellbound. She honestly and generously gives her account of the implosion of a family of seven, at times quite challenging with what may be perceived as a surfeit of personal detail. I was captivated by the chaos and drama of one family.
Gabrielle grew up with her mother, father and the youngest of five children, all independent individual in nature and soul. Her parents were unlike other she knew, enigmatic and carefree. But this charming nature came with a price: there was no yardstick these children could ever measure up to, and no success of these children could ever be greater than that of their parent’s excellence, which was mediocre at best. Her father was narcissistic, her mother indifferent and inconsequential. When her parents separated and her mother left the family home, each child was literally left to fend for themselves. And it is this isolating upbringing that set the wheels in motion for disaster for all of them. Becoming adults, they were disillusioned and distanced from each other. All of the things that should have brought them closer created distance, heightened antagonism and indignation between the siblings. The death of her two brothers – a suicide and a sudden death – created more ripples in a complicated family, on top of her own marriage and family struggles. This was a good book, I didn't realize it was a memoir when I clicked on the book for approval, I'm so glad I did.
Thanks NetGalley, Random House Publishing and Author Gabrielle Hamilton for the copy of "Next of Kin", I am leaving my review in appreciation
#NetGalley
#RandomHouse
#NextofKin
#GabrielleHamilton
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
October 22, 2025
⭐⭐⭐⭐☆ (4/5 stars)
Next of Kin by Gabrielle Hamilton is a haunting, brutally honest memoir that dives deep into the complicated terrain of family, forgiveness, and the wreckage that can come from both. If her first memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter, was about the making of a chef, Next of Kin is about the unmaking of a family, and, in some ways, of herself.
Hamilton writes about her childhood with a sharpness that cuts right through sentimentality. Her parents- an eccentric, egotistical set designer and a distant, sometimes volatile mother, created a home that was more chaotic stage set than safe haven. The result? A pack of children left to raise themselves, forging their own rules and wounds along the way. Decades later, the fractures remain, and Hamilton’s storytelling becomes an excavation of what’s left behind when love is conditional and survival becomes instinct.
What makes this memoir stand out isn’t just her story, it’s how she tells it. Hamilton’s prose is raw, elegant, and occasionally gut-punching. She has that rare ability to make a sentence shimmer while also making you wince. There are lines here that stick with you, not because they’re poetic, but because they’re true in the most uncomfortable way.
That said, there are moments where the book feels more like fragments than a full story, glimpses of grief, resentment, and fleeting tenderness rather than a cohesive arc. Hamilton is almost too honest at times, dissecting her family and her own role in their dysfunction but rarely offering clarity or closure. It can feel like being invited into someone’s house only to find all the doors half-shut.
Still, I couldn’t look away. There’s something magnetic about her refusal to sugarcoat anything—not her mother’s cruelty, her father’s narcissism, her siblings’ estrangement, or her own contradictions.
Next of Kin is messy, painful, and often unflinching, but that’s exactly what makes it powerful.
It’s not an easy read, but it’s a compelling one, an intimate portrait of a woman still trying to understand how the people who shaped her could also shatter her.
A tough but beautifully written memoir that lingers long after you close it.
A big thank you to NetGalley and Random House for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
Next of Kin by Gabrielle Hamilton is a haunting, brutally honest memoir that dives deep into the complicated terrain of family, forgiveness, and the wreckage that can come from both. If her first memoir, Blood, Bones & Butter, was about the making of a chef, Next of Kin is about the unmaking of a family, and, in some ways, of herself.
Hamilton writes about her childhood with a sharpness that cuts right through sentimentality. Her parents- an eccentric, egotistical set designer and a distant, sometimes volatile mother, created a home that was more chaotic stage set than safe haven. The result? A pack of children left to raise themselves, forging their own rules and wounds along the way. Decades later, the fractures remain, and Hamilton’s storytelling becomes an excavation of what’s left behind when love is conditional and survival becomes instinct.
What makes this memoir stand out isn’t just her story, it’s how she tells it. Hamilton’s prose is raw, elegant, and occasionally gut-punching. She has that rare ability to make a sentence shimmer while also making you wince. There are lines here that stick with you, not because they’re poetic, but because they’re true in the most uncomfortable way.
That said, there are moments where the book feels more like fragments than a full story, glimpses of grief, resentment, and fleeting tenderness rather than a cohesive arc. Hamilton is almost too honest at times, dissecting her family and her own role in their dysfunction but rarely offering clarity or closure. It can feel like being invited into someone’s house only to find all the doors half-shut.
Still, I couldn’t look away. There’s something magnetic about her refusal to sugarcoat anything—not her mother’s cruelty, her father’s narcissism, her siblings’ estrangement, or her own contradictions.
Next of Kin is messy, painful, and often unflinching, but that’s exactly what makes it powerful.
It’s not an easy read, but it’s a compelling one, an intimate portrait of a woman still trying to understand how the people who shaped her could also shatter her.
A tough but beautifully written memoir that lingers long after you close it.
A big thank you to NetGalley and Random House for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.
January 22, 2026
Both books I have read for this year are by Gabrielle Hamilton. This is a more in-depth memoir of her family. Next of kin is an interesting concept that we don't think about too much and Ms Hamilton went years wanting to know more about her brother's suicide only to finally discover that as his "next of kin" she had a right to look at documents about him. The definition of next of kin declares that the chronological order is usually: spouse/civil partner, children, parents, siblings and grandparents.
In her previous book BLOOD, BONES AND BUTTER, she seemed pretty negative about her upbringing and struck me as gaunt and angry. But the photo of her in this new book shows a pretty, not gaunt but intelligent woman. She has matured and her life has proven to be successful with her educational level, teaching and writing, owning her restaurant in NYC and winning an award for a TV show called MIND OF A CHEF. She also has found happiness in marriage to a woman and has raised her 2 sons. So it is in the pages of this book she explores her family of origin and as she matures to make peace with her upbringing and her parents. She has become much more than just a chef.
She spent years avoiding her mother and now when her mother is 90 and in a care home she goes to see her. "She is frail and lost and small, all kinds of small. A child in a bed. You freely give her the kisses on both cheeks she used to demand, the ones you usually despise giving her, because she has always made them last too long and has always taken more from you than you were comfortable giving. Now it costs you nothing to give her what she wants." It is sad how daughters spend so much time trying not be like their mothers and to get away from them and it isn't until it is almost too late that the competition or fear or whatever that goes on between mothers and daughters can fade away---that the daughter can appreciate the mother with the same feeling the mother felt holding that daughter as a baby.
In her previous book BLOOD, BONES AND BUTTER, she seemed pretty negative about her upbringing and struck me as gaunt and angry. But the photo of her in this new book shows a pretty, not gaunt but intelligent woman. She has matured and her life has proven to be successful with her educational level, teaching and writing, owning her restaurant in NYC and winning an award for a TV show called MIND OF A CHEF. She also has found happiness in marriage to a woman and has raised her 2 sons. So it is in the pages of this book she explores her family of origin and as she matures to make peace with her upbringing and her parents. She has become much more than just a chef.
She spent years avoiding her mother and now when her mother is 90 and in a care home she goes to see her. "She is frail and lost and small, all kinds of small. A child in a bed. You freely give her the kisses on both cheeks she used to demand, the ones you usually despise giving her, because she has always made them last too long and has always taken more from you than you were comfortable giving. Now it costs you nothing to give her what she wants." It is sad how daughters spend so much time trying not be like their mothers and to get away from them and it isn't until it is almost too late that the competition or fear or whatever that goes on between mothers and daughters can fade away---that the daughter can appreciate the mother with the same feeling the mother felt holding that daughter as a baby.
September 2, 2025
This one isn't really about food. You could describe it as being about a family with five kids, written by one of the siblings, where two siblings have died early deaths, the author is fully estranged from a third (as well as from her parents), and doesn't really like the fourth all that much. (In other words, good salve for the parent of the only child who worries about her future grown-up daughter having no family support...)
But really, it's about the sadness of having your childhood belief that you had a GREAT family...funny, creative, resilient, full of characters...ripped apart by the reality of events. There's something truly poignant about the way it's written; Hamilton clearly still remembers how it felt to be eight and to believe that you belonged to something exceptional, and that feeling rolls in waves through the prose describing those days. Then, periodically, she brings you up against something truly cruel, small, upsetting done by one family member to another, and the illusion is broken.
(She is not exempt from these failings, and the kernel of the book, where she reveals that she cheated with her sister's husband, is probably the most nihilistic low of the story. If I could deduct .25 stars for that section I might, just because I don't understand what happened there - it's introduced and fairly quickly waved away - but I suspect she may have been unable to be truly forthcoming with the details. The sister seems mad enough to sue.)
This memoir contains an excellent character study of the type of mother who loves parenting babies, but dislikes having the resultant children and teenagers in her house. (As her mom says of herself, "Loves kittens, hates cats.") I perceive many mothers of this type exist. This matter should be further investigated.
Anyway this one ruined me for other books for an afternoon. I recommend it!
But really, it's about the sadness of having your childhood belief that you had a GREAT family...funny, creative, resilient, full of characters...ripped apart by the reality of events. There's something truly poignant about the way it's written; Hamilton clearly still remembers how it felt to be eight and to believe that you belonged to something exceptional, and that feeling rolls in waves through the prose describing those days. Then, periodically, she brings you up against something truly cruel, small, upsetting done by one family member to another, and the illusion is broken.
(She is not exempt from these failings, and the kernel of the book, where she reveals that she cheated with her sister's husband, is probably the most nihilistic low of the story. If I could deduct .25 stars for that section I might, just because I don't understand what happened there - it's introduced and fairly quickly waved away - but I suspect she may have been unable to be truly forthcoming with the details. The sister seems mad enough to sue.)
This memoir contains an excellent character study of the type of mother who loves parenting babies, but dislikes having the resultant children and teenagers in her house. (As her mom says of herself, "Loves kittens, hates cats.") I perceive many mothers of this type exist. This matter should be further investigated.
Anyway this one ruined me for other books for an afternoon. I recommend it!
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