True Love? This book's never heard of it.

A number of the readers have already heard me rant about this before, so if you have feel free to skip ahead to somebody else’s blog. But today, I am reserving this post for the worst book I have read all school year.

Like Water For Chocolate, by Laura Esquivel, is a fictional book about a Mexican family living in the time of the Mexican Revolution. Tita, the main character, is madly in love with her boyfriend Pedro, but she can never marry him because her family tradition says that she must care for her mother until she dies because Tita is the youngest daughter in the family. Tita is heart broken but her mother does not care, and neither does her sister Rosaura as she marries Pedro herself.

One big problem with the book is that almost every character has some terribly obnoxious trait that makes you want to jump into the story and uppercut them for their lack of common sense. Tita and Pedro both have no backbone as they never get together until nobody is around in the story anymore to tell them that their relationship is wrong. Mama Elena (Tita’s mother) is infinitely cold and insists on keeping Tita’s right to marry away for her own selfish reasons under this flawed family tradition.

Another problem I have with this book is the use of magic realism. Magic realism is basically an element that stories sometimes have where the book is set in a realistic environment, but sometimes bizarre and unexplainable things can happen at any time.

Why do I hate this “magic realism”? Because it merely gives the author an excuse to write any dumb plot twist she feels like slapping down on paper. For example, there is a scene where the reader is not allowed to feel relieved when Mama Elena passes away (spoiler) because Mama Elena just comes back as a ghost anyway to annoy Tita some more. You might be wondering “oh my god, she’s dead, so why can’t see just die already!”

I’ll tell you why. Magic realism, that’s why. And that’s the only reason the author needs.

In another scene, Tita cooks food for dinner when she is feeling passionate for Pedro, and as a direct result everyone who ate her food felt the same passion to get it on with someone. How could someone possibly feel true love for another just because they ate something? Do they feel no need for a true connection with other people as long as they have a human body?

Magic realism. Don’t question anything else that seems weird either, because you can predict at this point what the explanation will be. In essence, the “magic realism” technique in this story literally becomes like the staples “easy button” that we see all the time on television now. The author doesn’t have to worry herself with foolish “well thought out cause and effect explanations”, she just has to write down whatever ridiculous thing comes to mind first.

Lastly, the story has moments in the book where it will randomly talk the reader through a recipe for a meal that usually cannot be made successfully in real life anyway. These instructions are given to the reader in the middle of the chapter too. I found myself often skipping over a paragraph just to get on with the story when I started to see instructions. Maybe I’m missing something about this writing technique, but if you were reading about what happened in the last red sox game and all of a sudden it gave you a recipe for macaroni and cheese while describing the seventh inning, wouldn’t you think it’s weird too? To me it’s the same thing.

I’m just thankful I don’t live in a magic realistic world like this one, otherwise I might have to look at pop tart labels a little harder before eating them unless I want to risk getting in a special mood.