‘Like Water for Chocolate’: A feast for a book

Reading Laura Esquivel’s Like Water for Chocolate – the phenomenal debut novel by the Mexican author – made me realize that the kitchen is probably the only part of our house I show least respect to. Not that the book is about kitchen maintenance, but to describe it as total fiction is inaccurate. For how often do you pick a story that slots in food recipes (and I mean real food recipes) and home remedies into the complex web of a love story involving two sisters and a man they both love, and still come off as classic and unforgettable, leaving me (in any order now): crying, laughing, hungry, dreamy and enamored.

By the way, I’m not a kitchen goddess or anything. Not even a glint of second-rate cooking expertise can be found on my resume. I guess it is this indifference that made the book highly appealing to me. It challenged whatever gastronomic expertise I have on the side. Not only do the actual recipes in the book become stories themselves. They also define the existence and course of existence of the main characters in the story. Character analysis has never been as fun as reading about Tita’s sensitivity and Mama Elena’s sadism. We are rid of the usual literary hoopla and are instead given a distinct "recipe touch" that accounts for most of the book’s double-edged appeal. Recall how Tita’s incessant crying over onion chopping is carried on until the very end of the book, in the same manner that her character’s sensitivity is felt throughout the story. The antagonist in Mama Elena is likewise skillfully linked to certain kitchen preparations, such as dry-plucking quails and chopping a thousand nuts, both requiring considerable strength and ruthlessness.

Rarely too will you find a book that’s foreign and yet hits close to home. It helps that Mexico has a lot of shared culture with the Philippines, easily bringing into life the taste of Ox-Tail Soup (Chapter 7’s recipe) into our local palate. Share in the joys of Rosaura’s wedding as if it were your own, and hate Mama Elena’s guts like you do with Madame Claudia. But perhaps what makes Like Water most appealing to us Filipinos is the formula story itself: two people in love, Tita and Pedro, have to sacrifice the true calling of their hearts as tradition has sealed Tita’s fate to become a spinster for life. For Pedro, marrying Tita’s sister Rosaura seems to be the only sane solution to be near Tita.

In all honesty now, I think the book will have a greater chance at a happy ending if Pedro didn’t mess with the sisters’ feelings in the first place. The arranged marriage of Pedro and Rosaura must have carried a death sentence to the whole household, with various plagues and misfortunes adding to the test of time and of the kitchen’s buoyancy.

Lastly, the non-negotiability and primitiveness of this family’s numerous beliefs, ranging from Tita being designated as the lifetime caregiver of her mother, to the squareness of arranged marriages, accompanied the ascent of the lovers’ concealed but passionate affair, making it a truly pleasant read. Every inch of pleasure that was taken out by Rosaura’s rigidly seemed to be compensated by Tita’s gastronomic charms, making the latter enticing and daring at the same time.

The thing I like most about the Like Water for Chocolate is that it is a love story without being sissy, and Esquivel’s choice of metaphors is simply pleasing to the senses. Although realism takes a leave of absence in many pages, I was definitely moved by Pedro’s undying love for Tita, and of John’s sincerity and dedication to her. We feel for Tita when Pedro marries Rosaura, and when she continues to live with them and her spiteful mother. I don’t know about others but I certainly wished that Mama Elena would just go away and let her children live their lives, which in the end she does.

Which is not to say that the story is annoyingly predictable. The formula story works on the strength of the characters’ feelings. And what better way to document these fictitious thoughts than by letting imagination take free rein? With her first book I became an instant Esquivel fan. I simply marveled at the idea of Tita’s "Quail in Rose Petal Sauce" giving Gertrudis (the other sister) an orgasm and Pedro an indescribable pleasure. Imagination and surrealism provide a distinct touch to the text, making it lyrical minus the complex themes. It was as if we are consuming Tita rather than her recipes, as if we are lured toward the hundred secret aromas of the kitchen.

How I love it too when she (Esquivel) writes about family secrets like they’re neighborhood gossips, like when Tita discovers her Mama to have carried an illicit relationship with a mulatto. Proof too that romantic tales need not be conventionally idealistic is seen in Tita and Pedro’s love story which reflects the liberating influences of modern-day love stories. Theirs is a passionate and resilient kind of love.

Like Water for Chocolate can be described as a celebration of love. Like a chef whipping up a prize-winning recipe, a successful relationship requires spirit, dedication, lots of failed attempts, and a sixth-sense instinct. Esquivel’s book is a winner because it has an aphrodisiac effect on readers.

Like what water does for chocolate, the sweetness is evened out to present a poignant story, that’s about love as well as obsession. As John so aptly said, "If a strong emotion...lights all the candles we carry inside ourselves, it creates a brightness that shines far beyond...leaving the body lifeless."