nomadreader

Translated from the Spanish by Carol and Thomas Christensen. The backstory:  Like Water for Chocolate , Laura Esquivel's first novel, is one of the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die . The basics: Told in monthly installments interspersed with recipes, Like Water for Chocolate , is the story of the De la Garza family in the Mexican revolution and filled with magical realism of love and cooking. The narrator is the great-niece of Tita, and the novel's focus is the life of Tita, the family's youngest daughter. My thoughts: I first read Like Water for Chocolate  in high school and utterly adored it. Re-reading it fifteen years later, I still enjoyed it, but the magical realism of love's positive and negative effects lacked the dramatic resonance it held for me as a teenager. It is the tradition of Tita's family that the youngest daughter may not marry and must spend her life serving her mother. Tita is enraged, angry and in utter agony when she learns her fate wil...