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Like Water for Chocolate (novel)Like Water for Chocolate (Spanish: Como agua para chocolate) is a novel by Mexican novelist and screenwriter Laura Esquivel.
The novel follows the story of a young girl named Tita, who longs for her beloved, Pedro, but can never have him because of her mother's upholding of the family tradition: the youngest daughter cannot marry, but instead must take care of her mother until she dies. Tita is only able to express herself when she cooks.
Esquivel employs magical realism to combine the supernatural with the ordinary throughout the novel.
The novel won the American Booksellers Book of the Year Award for Adult Trade in 1994.
Plot
The book is divided into 12 sections named after the months of the year, starting in January and ending in December. Each section begins with a Mexican recipe. The chapters connect each dish to an event in the protagonist's life.
Tita de la Garza, the novel's main protagonist, is 15 at the start of the story. She lives on a ranch near the Mexico—US border with her mother, Mamá Elena, and her older sisters Gertrudis and Rosaura.
Pedro is their neighbor, with whom Tita falls in love at first sight. The feeling turns out to be mutual, so Pedro asks Mamá Elena for Tita’s hand in marriage. Unfortunately, she forbids it, citing the de la Garza family tradition that the youngest daughter (in this case, Tita) must remain unmarried and take care of her mother until her mother's death. She suggests that Pedro marry Tita's sister, Rosaura, instead. In order to stay close to Tita, Pedro decides to follow this advice.
Tita has a deep connection with food and a love for cooking, enhanced by the fact that Tita's primary caretaker as a child was Nacha, the family cook. Her love for cooking also comes from the fact that she was born in the kitchen.
In preparation of the wedding, Tita is forced to prepare the cake with Nacha. While preparing the cake, Tita is overcome with sadness, and cries into the cake batter. At the wedding, everyone gets violently sick, vomiting everywhere. Suspecting Tita was behind the incident, Mama Elena punishes Tita. After the wedding, Nacha is found dead, with a picture of her fiancé.
Later, Pedro and Rosaura have a son, Roberto. Rosaura is unable to nurse Roberto, so Tita brings Roberto to her breast to stop the baby from crying. Tita begins to produce breast milk and is able to nurse the baby. This draws her and Pedro closer than ever. They begin meeting secretly, snatching their few times together by sneaking around the ranch and behind the backs of Mamá Elena and Rosaura.
Tita’s strong emotions become infused into her cooking, unintentionally affecting the people around her through her food. After one particularly rich meal of quail in rose petal sauce flavored with Tita’s erotic thoughts of Pedro, Gertrudis becomes inflamed with lust and leaves the ranch in order to make ravenous love to a revolutionary soldier on the back of a horse, later ending up in a brothel and subsequently disowned by her mother.
Rosaura and Pedro are forced to leave for San Antonio, Texas, at the urging of Mamá Elena, who suspects a relationship between Tita and Pedro. Rosaura loses her son Roberto and later becomes infertile from complications during the birth of her daughter, Esperanza.
Upon learning the news of her nephew's death, whom she cared for herself, Tita blames her mother, who responds by smacking Tita across the face with a wooden spoon. Tita, destroyed by the death of her beloved nephew and unwilling to cope with her mother's controlling ways, secludes herself in the dovecote until the sympathetic Dr. John Brown soothes and comforts her. Mamá Elena states there is no place for "lunatics" like Tita on the farm, and wants her to be institutionalized. However, the doctor decides to take care of Tita at his home instead. Tita develops a close relationship with Dr. Brown, even planning to marry him, but her underlying feelings for Pedro do not waver.
While John is away, Tita loses her virginity to Pedro. A month later, Tita is worried she may be pregnant with Pedro’s child. Her mother's ghost taunts her, telling her that she and her child are cursed. Gertrudis visits the ranch for a special holiday and makes Pedro overhear about Tita’s pregnancy, causing Tita and Pedro to argue about running away together. This causes Pedro to get drunk and sing below Tita’s window while she is arguing with Mama Elena’s ghost. Just as she confirms she isn't pregnant and frees herself of her mother's grasp once and for all, Mamá Elena's ghost gets revenge on Tita by setting Pedro on fire, leaving him bedridden for a while and behaving like “a child throwing a tantrum
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