Friday, August 24, 2007

Trish's Review of Like Water for Chocolate

Title: Like Water for Chocolate
Author: Laura Esquirel
Pages: 264
Date Finished: August 22, 2007
Rating: 3/5

This is my first selection for Something About Me Challenge. I have wanted to read it for a few years now and picked it up cheap a few months ago at the local bookfair. Perfect! I love when things work out that way. This was Maryanne's selection. She writes, "This is one of the books that made me realize that the best cooks of all are the ones who cook with love." I completely agree with this statement and I believe that it holds very true for this book.

But, this book didn't do it for me. It was good and I mostly enjoyed reading it, but the book was a little too superficial. What I mean by that is that the character development was very weak, and after reading the book I didn't have any strong passions about what happened to the characters. I liked the way the book ended, but there just wasn't enough character/narrative depth. Perhaps there is more symbolic and analytical depth to the book, but if I'm not in a grad course I don't necessarily dig or delve into books the way I probably should (i.e. background research, textual research, analytical research, etc.).

My full review can be found on my blog. (Here I do go into talk about food, which is my favorite aspect of the book).

2 comments:

alisonwonderland said...

i listened to Like Water for Chocolate on tape about fifteen years ago. i can remember standing in the hallway of our small apartment doing ironing while i listened. i can remember enjoying it but, like you, also feeling that maybe i was missing something.

Trish @ Love, Laughter, Insanity said...

Alison - Ya, I think this might be a good one for ironing to. :) I hope my review didn't come across too harsh. I did enjoy it, just didn't love it...