My Rxn To LWFC

If this book ended midway through chapter 12, it would have been my dream school reading book! The language is cultural, but I could understand all of it unlike the pure dialect of the South or Shakespeare. The whole plot revolves around food (a big plus for me!) and a Korean soap opera worthy love triangle (super duper huge plus!). When I first picked up the novel, I wondered how a story could actually be formed from recipes. I remember thinking to myself that this would be a stilted book at best because how could that be the backbone, the foundation for a book? However, Esquivel not only proved me wrong but shoved my nose in it. I couldn’t imagine the significance food can have on a culture, or the different tangents one can take with it. It is like a whole new form of grammar or sentence structure I did not think possible! But, I did mention the twelfth chapter. I am and will always be a helpless, unrealistic, and definitely unreasonable romantic, and the ending killed me. John Brown, the “love” of Tita’s life, is left alone and yet still smiling on for Tita’s sake as she’s swept off into lust’s embrace a.k.a. Pedro. First, Pedro is a jerk. Not only does he use Rosaura to get to Tita, but then he expects somehow to love both of them (in different ways). Then, he gets mad when Tita finally has a chance for happiness, and lastly, even after he knows Tita turns John down, he has to get jealous and braggart-like when dancing at Esperanza and Alex’s wedding. The bad guy is not supposed to get the girl! To be honest, I did want Tita and Pedro together, but I don’t know why. It’s as if Esquivel makes us root for the two because the whole book is about them pining away for each other from across the hall. That’s drama; the real twitch in my conscience is that Pedro=lust and John=love, but Tita chooses lust over love, is happier in lust than love, and the “love” character is left out of luck with no wife of his own or anything. I wonder if Esquivel is trying to make a point about the true weighings of lust vs love. Overall, I love that this story is a romance (a non-literary, real romance with realistic ups and downs not including the magic) novel which automatically makes it wonderful, and on top of that, it had meaning, symbolism, a hint of the fantastic (!), and a (somewhat) happy ending.