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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".
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".
