Como agua para chocolate

Somehow, I don’t know how it happened, I reached adulthood without it ever occurring to me that what an animal eats might affect how it tastes. I had never imagined recipes with steps that begin with the number of walnuts to feed a turkey each day.

And, most startling, the idea that the emotions of the cook could transfer into the food and affect the eaters! It was an enchanting, though somewhat disconcerting idea. I tend to get stressed when I cook. What does that do? I thought back on emotions I’d experienced while cooking over the scope of my life and tried to remember the people who had eaten those foods. I almost felt like I should be in confession or, at the very least, owed a few of them a quiet apology.

Those were some of the things that captivated my mind the first time I read Mexican writer Laura Esquivel’s 1989 novel Like Water for Chocolate.

Recently, I read the novel again, but in a very different way. I read Como aqua para chocolate in an effort to learn Spanish, keeping the English translation close by. Along the way, I was able to enjoy comparing what was left out or included in each version.

For example, in the Spanish version, it isn’t necessary to explain what “como aqua para chocolate” means. It is a saying known in the culture. In the English version, it states that the main character, Tita, was like water for chocolate, meaning she was on the verge of boiling over with emotion.

The novel is highly structured and I view that as a strength. Each chapter is given a month of the year, twelve chapters in all, and a recipe. Typically, the chapter begins with an explanation of how to prepare the dish, or in one case, matches. Slowly, the context for what’s going on around that preparation begins to emerge. As the centerpiece of the novel, the kitchen remains true in the midst of much change over time.

Grounded in this structure, the novel is free to bring the supernatural and the ordinary together. One example is the quilt that Tita knits during nights of insomnia, unable to be with the man she loves. When she leaves the ranch with the quilt about half way through the novel, it is described as stretching for a kilometer. This use of magical realism works well because it gives the story the tone of a legend that is passed down in a family and bears the natural exaggerations that find their way, fish-this-big style, into such stories.

In the first paragraph of the novel, there is a narrating “I” who claims Tita as a great-aunt. It isn’t until the last paragraph of the novel that “I” returns again and we find out who “I” is.

The story kept me guessing right to the end. Just when I thought I knew what was going to happen, there was a curveball. I didn’t find out which man Tita chose until the final ten pages. And it was interesting to ponder the choice, because I could see both sides.

Laura Esquivel ties the story in with history. That was advice I’d received at a writer’s worship once: ground your writing in the greater context of what is happening in the world at the time. Laura Esquivel does this by weaving the Mexican Revolution into the storyline. Mama Elena makes a steely-eyed stand against the revolutionaries who want to pillage her ranch for supplies and women. And Tita’s sister, Gertrudis, becomes a general for the rebel cause. One of the funniest scenes in the novel involves Gertrudis ordering her loyal subordinate to make cream fritters for her because they were a favorite from childhood. Gertrudis and her sergeant attempt to read the infernal recipe, frustrated by the complicated details of ball stages for syrup. Gertrudis half-seriously threatens to shoot her sergeant if he doesn’t figure it out.

History, story-telling and magical realism come together very well in this legend and the narrator puts it together in one sentence from the month of March after Gertrudis’ dramatic exodus from the ranch: “That is the way history gets written, distorted by eyewitness accounts that don’t really match the reality,” (March, p. 52)

The characters are fully fleshed out with strengths and weaknesses. There is something to like and dislike about everyone. And they do unexpected things, so there are surprises around each corner to keep the story interesting and moving forward. I never felt the pace of the story lagged. I also liked that I could clearly see that it was the choices that the characters made, based on their unique perspectives, that caused the chain of events. Some characters tended to choose out of love, like John Brown, some in response to bitterness for wrongs in their own lives, like Mama Elena and Rosaura. Tita and Pedro succumbed to being pawns in the story at times, but there was a thread of challenge to that idea and especially Tita grew in her understanding that she needed to be charge of the choices of her life.

I highly recommend reading the novel. The language is beautiful and poetic, especially in Spanish. It’s a well-told story with an engaging plot. The action moves along and you want to keep reading to find out what happens. And you might decide to try some of the recipes. I tried one years ago. I had to modify quite a bit due to my distance from Mexican ingredients in an Alaskan kitchen, but it was fun to feel for just a moment that I was in Tita’s kitchen making delicious food packed full of all my love.