I’m still uncomfortable with the whole romance and couldn’t really throw myself into the riot of guiltless fantasy all he way.

In Tita’s family there is really no protagonist to root for other than Tita, mostly due to the fairy tale setup of the evil mother and duplicitous sister. Like Water for Chocolate isn’t quite like that though. Instead of following the doomed lovers we are supposed to root for, I often think of the languishing, betrayed, and lied to spouses who skulk off camera. Normally, I don’t like this kind of story, specifically the romanticizing of unfaithfulness. We know from the beginning that Tita will not have her dearest wish, the narrator reveals it on the first page, yet the fluidity of story and the magic that is so real and believable here makes us read with a longing for Tita’s fulfillment, for her happy ending, for some love in her life that stretches beyond the kitchen and the antics of Mama Elena. Taking place during the Mexican revolution, Tita’s story has the aged vitality of history recounted, in this case by a descendant thinking back on her aunt’s unhappy life during a place and time, and in a bizarre family, that brooks no inner revolution, no independence. Except when the man she loves moves into the family house and raises his children there and still, under cover of darkness, professes his love. Except when she prepares the wedding feast.

And so, kitchens and food are all that is left, and it is, almost, everything. Her lover will marry another woman – her sister. And for Tita, doomed by her strict Mama Elena to remain unwed, to be a good daughter and follow a family tradition and sacrifice her life to tend to her aging, cruel mother, food is all she has left. They are the soul – the embodiment of passion and desire, the epitome of longing fulfilled, and love poured out. Being born in a kitchen means that food, the cooking and serving of it, are more than the formal essentials of staying alive to her. A decadent folk tale with the imagination of a fairy tale and the heart of a forbidden romance, Like Water for Chocolate follows Tita.

Like water for chocolate book