Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel is definitely a quirky book. It was a bit difficult at first to try and sift through all of the food being woven into the story and what it represented. I also found it a bit hard to follow at times. I cannot say that it has been my favorite story and I tried to just let the story go as told but I found myself over analyzing and trying to wonder what things meant too often to maybe fully enjoy it. I found some of the descriptions very vivid, such as in August when a baby being attached to the placenta is described and if pulled out by the umbilical cord, the whole uterus would come out along with it! My favorite use of food being used for emotions is on page 67 in April. Tita continues to grind flour while staring at Pedro, as if she is making a statement about what she wants to do with him while cooking. It is quite erotic but not explicit.
While reading this book I often wondered if any of the recipes would be any good. On the first page of September cocoa beans are mentioned and it reminded me of visiting Hershey Park and how wonderful chocolate sounded! To be honest I found the food a bit distracting. The sex throughout the book was not something that bothered me and I was expecting it to be more graphic when I started the novel. I think it will be interesting to compare the movie and the novel, not just for how the sex is portrayed, but for how the novel as a whole will play out on film. This was definitely an interesting book. Not something that I would pick up to read for every day but I am glad that I read it. I had never heard of it before and would not have chosen to read it on my own so I am glad that I got the experience.
I like your specific examples to illustrate the parts of the text that strongly affected you. You make a good point about how the food and the sex are key to the text, and how they translate these themes into the movie is critical to the success or failure of the film. For the Reader Response genre, you do not make a very strong connection between your person experiences and how they affect your reading of the text. Your mention of the Hershey Park was a good start, so more detail in that area would be a good way to connect your perception of chocolate with the way chocolate is portrayed in the text.
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