Like water for chocolate
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My favourite book! The passion and ever lasting love shared between Pedro and Tita truly is magical!!
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Still a wonderful read
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I'd first read `Like Water for Chocolate' about 10 years ago and had found it simply amazing. Then again, it had been the my first contact with a book so unique ... the first novel to talk about the "magical" power of food, a combination which is now much more common thanks to writers and books like Joanne Harris' wonderful `Chocolat', Lily Prior's `La Cucina', Anthony Capella's `Food of Love', and Isabel Allende's `Aphrodite' and many others. In fact many of my favourite books fall into what has now become a genre in its own right.
`Like Water for Chocolate' may have lost some of it's uniqueness over the years but much of its magic and power is still there - even for a reader that's become much more jaded over the years. Well worth a read.
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This is a wonderful book
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This book is a must for anyone interested in Hispanic literature. It combines a beautiful, troubled love story with hispanic symbolism and imagery to create a wonderful novel of forbidden love, hidden attraction and mexican traditions and recipes. Look out for the fabulously evil Mama Elena ('I warn you sir, I have very good aim, and a very bad temper'!), the delightfully rebellious Gertudis with her explosive sexual frustration and the incredibly lovely and understanding John. This novel contains a host of incredibly different supporting characters, who all revolve around the virtous Tita, and her emotionally expressive recipes. This book made me want to jump up, cook a mexican 'mole' and dance with revolutionaries. it's great. Buy it. Now.
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Overrated
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I don't know why everyone's got so worked up about this book. Hopefully it's just the translation, but the writing was bludgeoningly pedestrian. The plot was hugely derivative (you'll pretty much be able to write the thing yourself after reading the first chapter) and I was afraid to sneeze while reading it in case all the characters blew over. While we're on the subject, the basic premise put me off almost from the outset: would this guy really drop everything and marry the love of his life's sister based on about one disapproving sentence from her mother? And the author seemed to take a rather unsettling pleasure in punishing the poor people who happen to get in the protagonists' way. I have to admit that it wasn't wholly without merit; some of the magic realism was fun, but felt rather forced at times.
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A magical fantasy
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This book takes you somewhere quite magical. For any one who enjoys food this is a must. I read it about 15 years ago and again when I managed to get my own copy recently and it was as good the second time around as I remember it being.
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