Like Water for Chocolate was recommended to me by a fellow blogger. I stayed up until 3 am reading it and I liked it immensely. This is a beautiful and potent love story of Tita, the youngest daughter in the family. Born in a kitchen, Tita grows up to be a master chef, a real artist in the kitchen. This novel reflects that, as every chapter is predated by a recipe. Mexican culture and cuisine are present at every page of this novel. Perhaps it is as much a novel about Mexico, as it is about Tita. At the start of the novel, Tita is an adolescent girl in love. Our female protagonist is entrapped by tradition that dictates that the youngest daughter mustn't marry but rather take care of its mother for the rest of her life. When Tita announces to her rather abusive mother that Pedro is coming to ask for her hand in marriage, she invokes her mother's fury and hatred.

Forbidden romance creating tension that is poured into the cooking of our protagonist. It is through her meals that Pedro and Tita communicate their love. Esquivel writes so fluently and poetically. If you love magic realism, you'll probably going to love this novel. I bought the Croatian edition because it was illustrated by my favourite illustrator. Another reason why I'm happy I own a copy is because I plan to reread it some day. It is that good!

I wasn't disappointed by this novel in any way. The characters are lively and well portrayed, the narrative is interesting, the plot holds the reader's attention and the writing is beautiful. At times the novel is a bit melodramatic, but somehow melodrama and magic realism come together nicely and the book ends up being a success. There is also some subtle dark humour in it that I enjoyed. Some episodes have a note of absurdity that seems to both mock soap operas and pay them respect. Altogether, I quite enjoyed this novel. A must read for lovers of Latin American literature.

Okay, so maybe more of a 3 1/2 star. I have a love/hate relationship with magical realism and, if anything, part of my disappoint with the novel comes from the fact that there's not as much "magic" as I had hoped for (I prefer Isabel Allende's House of the Sprits by comparison). However, I still enjoyed the novel as it was unique in its structure, and the conduit for the magical aspects of the novel--food--was beautifully rendered in the recipes and descriptions of the connection between food and culture, as well as food and memory.

Tita, the youngest daughter in her family, is doomed by tradition. She grows up knowing that she will never marry as it is her fate to take care of her tyrannical mother as she enters old age. Tita might have been able to resign herself to her destiny if it weren't for Pedro, the man with whom she falls passionately in love at first sight. Tita's mother, of course, forbids the marriage and instead does the unthinkable--offers Pedro her eldest daughter Rosaura's hand in marriage. Pedro, the effin' fool that he is (oh, that's my other complaint with the book; I did not cotton to Pedro, although, to be fair, he's not a very well-developed character and so his actions come across as moronic since his only driving impulse is to be with Tita), accepts because it is the only way he can be near Tita. Oh, yeah. You know that's a plan that's going to end in a fustercluck.

Tita is both elated to know that Pedro is only marrying her sister out of love for Tita and depressed by the fact that their love is to go unconsummated as long as her mother's eagle eye ensures that the two are kept apart. Unable to express her innermost desires, they instead surface in her famed cooking. Ordinary meals become an emotional feast as those who eat her food are consumed by Tita's suppressed passion, anger, and resentment.

The episodic structure of the novel is genius, separated month by month and beginning with the recipe around which the story will revolve.

The characters are somewhat one-dimensional, but given that the novel has a fairytale quality to it and reads more as myth than reality, I'm willing to forgive that. What ruined the entire novel for me was the ending. I don't want to ruin it for other readers, so I will simply say that I don't think Tita chose the right man and leave it at that.

Cross posted at This Insignificant Cinder

I enjoyed this tremendously - which was unexpected.

For the first quarter of the book - which I read quickly - I found the tone and the magic realism quite twee, in a way that reminded me a lot of 100 Years of Solitude, or rather my perception of it nearly 25 years ago. I was wondering what was wrong with me that I found this twee and unpalatably artificial, yet I loved a collection of Russian fairy tales I've been dipping into over the last couple of weeks. But something clicked, and I soon, at timeswhen I wasn't reading Like Water for Chocolate, I couldn't wait to get back to it, in a way that I hadn't found with any book for a long time. (Perhaps perversely, one of these is more likely to be a 4-star than a 5-star book, as the latter can feel almost too profound or too rich.)

The romance plot wasn't the main point of the novel for me, and nor did I find it obtrusive. It served a similar purpose to the investigation in a crime novel which has a strong setting: a framework for hearing about people in a particular place and time. And also about food! Two aspects of the book I now want to read more about are real people's attempts to make the recipes (some recipes are vague about important proportions, so would require experimentation), and the idea that the whole novel is an allegory for the Mexican Revolutionary War (and that it isn't simply part of the background to the story). Maybe it is melodramatic, but Tita, the heroine is aged about 15-20 for most of the novel, living in a society where families were fearsomely strict, where there was no divorce, and there was a war raging locally: I think she can be forgiven for being melodramatic. I didn't like the very ending and felt it didn't suit the 39-year old she had become, but it's not like I've lived in a similar society so ... *shrug*.

I just found the whole thing very likeable in a way that might not be justifiable if set down as bullet points. (Apart from Pedro - Tita's attraction to him must be due to chemistry, as in personality he seems uninteresting and not very nice. And his name, combined with the chilli-filled recipes, meant I was also plagued with remembering Pedro Pepper, a character from 1970s-80s children's series the Garden Gang, and that only made it harder to take him seriously.) Whilst it's not stereotype free, especially about qualities Tita's sister Gertrudis seems to have inherited, it seemed less stereotyped than most popular women's fiction that I've read in English (not a huge amount - and it may be that I simply don't know the territory of this Mexican novel).

It was from The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake (2011) - a book I haven't read beyond a few pages - that I first heard of fictional food which transmitted the cook's emotions. Then I discovered it in a 1993 short story collection by Nicola Barker, and thought Aimee Bender had lifted it from there. But Like Water for Chocolate appeared in English a little earlier again (1992) and may have been the source/inspiration for both. Yet after all these examples, it feels like an idea that may have occurred much earlier too, in fairytales, but that is pure conjecture.

By the time I was half way through I was eager to find similar novels - but Esquivel's other books in English don't have very good reviews. There are recent sequels to Like Water for Chocolate but they have not been translated, and neither of them centres the most fascinating secondary story in the novel, that of Gertrudis. (That might need a different author, one who was more blatant and assertive about sex and violence, and less romantic.)

For many years I've looked at popular women's fiction (such as this book) and wondered what it would be like to be someone who enjoyed it as a genre. Would that involve being someone who found it easier to fit in? I am not sure whether enjoying Like Water for Chocolate means I've changed a little, or if it was the setting and unfamiliar history I liked as much as anything else, attractions that a UK-set equivalent wouldn't have. But alongside enjoying the book itself, I find a strange satisfaction in perhaps having been "normal" enough to like it. And it was gratifying to find out, after more than half a lifetime of seeing the title in shops, libraries, media and all over the place, what it actually means: "at boiling point".

n  n
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I don't read a ton of literature now because I read a lot of the ones most worth reading when I was younger (at least, the ones I thought worth reading), but one of my recent projects is revisiting some of the books I read as a teen and seeing if I liked them just as much upon taking a second look. I read LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE when I was in high school and I remember being totally shocked at all the scandalous sex scenes and family drama. In many ways, this is kind of like a magic-realism take on the V.C. Andrews fucked-up family Gothic, with all of its secret lusts, hidden violence, and tempestuous relationships, all lorded over by an evil matriarch who has it in for the heroine and wants to make her miserable.



Narrated by the grand-niece of the heroine, this is a story about a star-crossed romance. Tita, the heroine, is the youngest daughter of Mama Elena, which means that she must take care of her mother until she dies. When Tita falls passionately in love with another man, Pedro, her mother rebuffs his offer and hitches him to her other daughter instead, Rosaura. Pedro agrees only because marrying Rosaura means being close to Tita and he hopes to have an affair with her.



Lots of other things happen too, and some of them are totally crazy. Like, imagine causing fireworks displays and visions of the Northern lights every time you bang (you might be in a Sarah J. Maas novel!) Feelings also get transmitted to food, so depending on the mood of the chef that day, you might find yourself moved to bitter tears (to the point of death) or so desperately horny that you set your bath on fire. This fantastical element keeps the story moving and gives it an interesting, fairytale-like quality that I found fascinating, even though some of the characters made me want to knock their heads together.



If you're new to the magic-realism genre, this is a fun book to start out with. It's short, which makes it easy to read, and has all these fabulous descriptions of rustic Mexican cuisine. The romance is also fun, even if it doesn't really have the sort of HEA romance readers might expect, and has an over-the-top bodice-ripper vibe that I think I appreciate more now as an adult who reads bodice-rippers. Some people might say it's too racy for teens but I disagree-- for some teen girls, this will probably be the hook that gets them into classic literature and shows them that it's not all stuffed shirts and dusty parlors.



3.5 stars

3.5⭐️
ایده‌ی نو و تلفیق داستان با آشپزی و کشش زیادی که داشت، لایق 4 ستاره‌ست ولی از پایان‌بندی کتاب اونقدر ناراضیم که نیم ستاره کم می‌کنم.

زیباترین عنصر کتاب، تلفیق احساساتِ تیتا با آشپزی بود. اینکه ناراحتی و عشق و دعوا و غم و شورِ تیتا توی طعم و پختِ غذا نمود پیدا می‌کرد، قشنگ بود.
هدف اصلی نویسنده مبارزه با آداب و رسومِ بی‌منطقی بود که سرنوشت آدم‌ها رو تحت شعاع قرار می‌داد. اینکه به مرور زمان باید این باورها منسوخ بشه و هرکس آزادانه به دنبال زندگی خودش بره.

ماما النا نمادِ تابوهایی بود که انسان رو اسیر خودش می‌کرد و حتی بعد از مرگش هم سایه‌ی این اجبار بر سرِ تیتا سنگینی می‌کرد.
آشپزخونه سنگرِ امنِ تیتا بود. جایی که همیشه به اون فرار می‌کرد و در آغوش گرمش پناه می‌گرفت.
گروترودیس، کسی بود که خودش رو از بندِ این اسارت رها کرد و برای زندگیش شخصا تصمیم گرفت و تنها کسی بود که احساس خوشبختی می‌کرد.
این وسط، طفلکی‌ترین شخصیت رو جان داشت که می‌تونم براش گریه کنم

Llevo media vida pensando (y prejuzgando) que este libro no me iba a gustar. Dando por hecho que, a causa de la información que me había llegado de él, iba a ser un libro tan romántico y tan "cursi" que no iba a poder disfrutarlo. Benditos sean los cambios de opinión y atraverse con todo, porque si no me perdería muchas cosas interesantes como esta obra.

Tita nacerá como la menor de tres hermanas. Estas, Rosaura, y Gertudris, serán educadas por Mama Elena de una manera muy diferente de lo que lo será Tita. Y es que en la familia existe una tradición que se remonta a siglos pasados. Dicha tradición consiste en que la hija menor de la familia, en cada generación, tendrá que renunciar a una vida propia, a casarse o a tener hijos, ya que su único cometido será el de vivir para cuidar de sus padres. El destino de Tita está trazado, se dedicará en cuerpo y alma a cuidar de su madre. Pero un día conocerá a Pedro, y ambos caerán irremediablemente enamorados. Una enorme pasión que lo cambiará todo a su paso.

El realismo mágico es una cosa que siempre me entra muy bien. Lo disfruto muchísimo. Poco he leído para lo mucho que lo disfruto. Y en Como agua para chocolate es uno de los puntos fuertes. La forma de contar la historia es otro de los grandes puntos a favor. A través de doce meses y doce recetas de comidas, la autora nos irá contando la vida de Tita, sus amores, la relación con su madre y sus hermanas y sobre todo su amor por la cocina.

Si hay algo que destaca en este libro es el gusto y respeto por la comida. Tita ama cocinar y pone tanto mimo en la elaboración de su comida, que incluso consigue dotar a esta de sus emociones, contagiándolas a las personas que prueban sus elaboraciones. No sé si seré solo yo, pero el libro me abriá el apetito todo el tiempo.

Me ha gustado mucho también ver en Tita una mujer fuerte, y que aunque tarda en sacar las garras para mi gusto, las termina sacando. La reflexión sobre como la sociedad trata de controlar a la mujer para que no sea libre a través de la "decencia", como debe o no comportarse una mujer. Es una herramienta más para controlarla, y Tita, no se deja manipular.

Lo único que no me ha gustado al completo es Pedro. A veces lo entendía, a veces me resultaba demasiado prototipo de "macho" agresivo que toma lo que quiere, sin pedir primero permiso. Entiendo la época y el contexto cultural, y por eso no va a variar mi disfrute de la novela, pero a fin de cuenta, ese detalle es lo que ha hecho que no se lleve las cinco estrellas. Hubiera rebajado algo el carácter del protagonista, y hubiera sido redondo.

El final me ha parecido espectacular. No me esperaba para nada un final así, con una belleza visual tan grande. Me ha impactado mucho esa última página. Un gustazo haberme encontrado por fin con Laura Esquivel.

Com a leitura de Como Água para Chocolate, estreio-me no mundo literário de Laura Esquivel. E que mundo mágico! Tudo neste livro me deixou maravilhada. Até o facto de cada capítulo corresponder a uma receita tradicional mexicana. Logo eu que não tenho jeito nenhum para a cozinha. Mas, pelo menos, estas receitas deixaram-me com água na boca, o que aliviou um pouco a tensão do que se desenrolava perante os meus olhos inquietos. A família De la Garza tem muito que se lhe diga, mas em duas palavras: completamente disfuncional. A Mamã Elena é uma mulher amarga e que descarrega toda a sua amargura em Tita.
«Compreendeu que não se podia ser fraco nisto da matança: ou se fazia com firmeza ou só se causava uma grande dor. Nesse momento pensou em como seria bom ter a força da Mamã Elena. Ela matava assim, de um golpe, sem piedade. Bom, ainda que pensando bem, não. Com ela tinha feito uma excepção, começara a matá-la desde pequenina, pouco a pouco, e ainda não lhe dera o golpe final.»
Tita, doce Tita. Que injusta tradição a de a filha mais nova cuidar da mãe até à sua morte! Então e quem depois cuida da filha mais nova? Tradição cruel que separou a protagonista do seu amado Pedro. História mais triste e mais dramática do que esta, raramente li. Eu tenho cá a minha opinião de como todos deviam ter procedido. Realmente, irritei-me muito no início da leitura ao reparar como tudo parecia ser feito ao jeito da matriarca da família. Mas depois respirava fundo e pensava que na altura em que a história é narrada pouco podia ser feito, ou mesmo, nada. As normas e convenções sociais foram feitas para serem respeitadas, quer se concorde ou não com elas. Suponho que sou uma sortuda pela época e lugar onde nasci; é pena não me aperceber mais vezes disto. O final deixou-me de lágrimas nos olhos, mas seria impossível que o desenrolar dos acontecimentos fosse ainda mais perfeito. Tita e Pedro mereciam algo que, na verdade, nunca esteve ao seu alcance; mas não faz mal, pois o amor consegue vingar onde mais nada sobrevive.

Bir rüyayı izler gibi okudum.
Sanırım her yaptığım özel yemekte bu kitabı hatırlayacağım.
Sevgili Gülüzar'a teşekkürlerimle :)

Like Water for Chocolate is a romantic, emotional tale of Tita and Pedro, in turn-of-the-century Mexico with a blend of romance and lots of family drama and recipes.

Tita De La Garza, the youngest of Mama Elena's three daughters, whose fate, dictated by family tradition, is to remain single so that she can take care of her mother in her old age. Tita has learned all the family recipes and remedies. When Pedro, Tita's admirer, asks for Tita's hand in marriage, her mother refuses permission, offering instead Tita's older sister, Rosaura. Pedro accepts, thinking it will be a way to stay close to his one true love. As we witness the nurturing Tita's struggle to be true both to family tradition and to her own heart, we also realize that Tita has special talents, both in the kitchen and beyond dishes. Eventually, Tita must choose between marrying a loving, devoted doctor or saving herself for Pedro, her first true love.

Each chapter begins with a recipe and much of the action centers around the kitchen, the heart, and soul of a traditional Mexican family. Esquivel does a splendid job of describing the frustration, love, and hope expressed through cooking. Each recipe was thematically related to what was happening in the story.

As for the plot, this is a fairy tale with elements of magical realism. So we have many magical elements embedded in the story like how Tita's thoughts get transferred to the food, ghosts, and paranormal elements among others. So, while the story is a mix of folklore and magical realism, some may find the magical elements too hard to believe.

Though I loved the fairy tale narration, there are many things that troubled me. There were also plot elements that I found really disturbing; especially the violence and sexual themes which make it unsuitable for teens IMHO. The ending of the book was pretty disappointing.

Overall, the writing was good and the fun recipes in this book will make you read the book till the end.

للذواقة فقط..لعشاق مباهج الحياة..ولو لم تكن منهم مثلي انا،ستنبهك"تيتا"لكل ما يفوتك
ستجعلك تتساءل بغل :لماذا تزداد تعاستنا كلما ازدادت حياتنا سهولة؟ رواية من 12فصلا يبدأ كل منها بوصفة طعام مناسبة لكل شهر من شهور العام

امتلأت الرواية بالطعام و لم يأت ذكر للمال في اي سطر من سطورها!!؟
فهل المال سر تعاستنا؟ لا..ابداً !فكل الابطال كان لهم نصيبهم الوافي من التعاسة..ولكنها ناتجة عن حماقة وانانية..بلا حدود
♡لابد أن اؤكد اولا ان نقطة ماء واحدة تفسد الشيكولاته تماما و لا يناسب الماء سوى مسحوق الكاكاو فقط♡

و ما ان تندمج في مآسي عائلة تيتا و بيدرو و علاقتهم المستحيلة.. حتى تضحك في بلاهة على الخيال المذهل :"بكت حتى اغرقت السلالم بالماء وبعد آن جفت الدموع.. كنسوا 5كيلو من الملح ليطهوا به لعام كامل! "او"و تدثرت بلحافها الذي صنعته في ليالي الارق..ليغطي 3هكتارات!أي كل أراضي المزرعة "ا

هي رواية عن الأنثى المشعة..صاحبة الفطرة السليمة..المنتجة لكل
ما هو ساحر..أكلات ..مشروبات..علاجات..ملابس.احاديث ؛اهتمام صادق..كيف تأسر من حولها
وتفوز بغيرة من هم دونها
تذكرنا الرواية
بأن للطعام مكانة كبيرة لا تضاهى في ذكرياتنا..بحلوها و