Tita’s Diary (Like Water for Chocolate)
Have you ever wondered how the story of Cinderella might have turned out, had the prince married one of Cinderella’s sisters? Tita’s Diary might provide the answer. It starts in 1910, the same time Esquivel’s magical realist publishing sensation of the 1990s, Like Water For Chocolate, begins. In the quest for her prince, we see that book’s events through Tita’s first-person diary. Denied her love by a controlling mother, Tita cooks and cleans for her sister’s family, putting her first-born nephew to her own breasts and rearing her niece. All the while the passion for her brother-in-law burns with fierce and consuming heat that sometimes drives her to madness, other times to the arms of the beatific Dr. Brown, and still other times to her kitchen.
Recipes, pressed mementos, philosophy and photographs abound throughout the handwritten text. So does a fuller story of Tita’s mother’s past, family secrets and the life and times of a third revolutionary sister. Hearing from Tita herself is sure to please the many fans of the original story, but for this one, the object of her affectionate passion remains stubbornly passive and colorless amid all the drama.
