by Happy writer

Created on: April 27, 2008

Comparing Like Water For Chocolate to a food that sums it up

Delicious! And if I could, I would surely love to lick the cover of this book ... but alas, I am still gripped by fear at the repercussions of licking not book covers but plates. Yes, years in a Scottish boarding school getting locked in freezing cold vestibules by scary matrons in the name of discipline will do that to you! Memories light the corners of my mind, misty water color memories of the way we were. Ahem. On to a more uplifting subject...like...Like water For Chocolate. This is a lovely story. A fast read, delightful from start to finish. Esquirel knits her story together with traditional Mexican recipes in which food and emotions are in sync at all times. She lights up her novel with the descriptions of farm life, outhouses, ranches, natural remedies, mysticism. Life at the turn of the 20th century. Yet this turn takes place in Mexico.

The story begins with the birth of Tita, and it is her tears that we soak up throughout her life. Tita is the last born daughter to Mama Elena De La Garza and, so obliging tradition, she is destined to look after her mother until death. This was probably a great idea in theory, but practice proved much harder especially when she fell in love. Mama Elena, a hard handed woman not willing to yield to tradition or give up her rightful possession, would not agree to the proposal made by Tita's love, Pedro. Instead she suggested he marry Tita's older sister, Rosaura. Pedro agreed as he saw this as an opportunity to be near Tita at all times regardless of the circumstances.

Throughout Tita's life journey, situations and feelings are mirrored in the recipes she prepares. Each chapter begins with a recipe that seems to have a direct relationship with the movements and sentiments evoked at the time of cooking, making Like Water For Chocolate beautifully rich in symbolism, not to mention mouth watering. Hell, as a resident of LA where Mexican food is available around every corner, after reading some of the recipes, I somehow felt that Chimichangas were no longer the real deal. I long to taste quail cooked with rose petals!

We follow Tita and Pedro, two lives forever linked by love. Yet timing and tradition make it always challenging. Their love is preserved through the revolution, the birth of Pedro and Rosaura's children, the death of Mama Elena, Tita's engagement to a doctor and eventually the death of Rosaura. And it is Pedro and Rosaura's daughter Esperanza - ironically

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