Like Water for Chocolate in Mineola Library's 2012 FALL Reading Challenge

Mar 15, 2009 Suzanne Moore rated it really liked it

Shelves: beach-reads, 1001-2006, 1001-2008

This story revolves around food and of course passion, love, and jealousy. Each chapter begins with a recipe and is followed by effects the food has on various characters. Tita the main character has literally grown up in the kitchen. She has been denied the right to marry by her widowed mother, who claims it is her duty as the youngest daughter to stay at home and take care of her in her old age. She learns to make traditional family meals and pours her longings .. heart and soul into her work. This story revolves around food and of course passion, love, and jealousy. Each chapter begins with a recipe and is followed by effects the food has on various characters. Tita the main character has literally grown up in the kitchen. She has been denied the right to marry by her widowed mother, who claims it is her duty as the youngest daughter to stay at home and take care of her in her old age. She learns to make traditional family meals and pours her longings .. heart and soul into her work. While cooking, she mourns her fate. She wants to marry Pedro, and yearns for a life with him. Pedro has married her sister in order to be as close to Tita as he can.

Her passionate feelings accent the food with a mysterious aphrodisiac, and her sadness leaves an emotional aftertaste to all who eat her cooking. When Gertrudis, another sister, is affected she becomes so consumed by desire, she bolts from the table and strips off her clothes to take an outdoor shower. The water has no effect on cooling her off. In fact her body heats up even more, turning the water to steam and creating some sort of internal combustion that causes the shower to burst into flames. She is rescued by a guerrilla soldier who comes riding by, grabs her naked and carries her away. This reminds me of a Blue Oyster Cult song ... Burnin For You

One of my favorite quotes is when Tita meets John, who wants to marry her, he tells her about his grandmother's theory on love and the soul …

"Each of us is born with a box of matches inside of us but we can't strike them all by ourselves; just as in the experiment, we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen, for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle could be any kind of food, music, caress, word or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn't find out in time what will set off these explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lit. If that happens, the soul flees from the body and goes to wander among the deepest shades, trying in vain to find food to nourish itself, unaware that only the body it left behind, cold and defenseless, is capable of providing that food.”

Despite his devotion to her, she can't forget or deny her feelings for Pedro. In the end when they find themselves together without obligations, their love ignites a fire that literally lights the sky and they are exhausted in a blaze of glory.

Like water for chocolate (not just the title) is a simile that compares their romantic feelings to the boiling point where water (using a double boiler) can melt chocolate. I think this is a creative description that symbolizes the love Tita and Pedro shared … sweet but dark and like chocolate sometimes bitter. ...more

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