ABSTRACT
This chapter explains the critics of Hailing Mexican scriptwriter Laura Esquivel's novel as a charming, sexy wonder of an import from south of the border, the review clippings that appear prominently on the back cover and the inset review pages of the Doubleday/Anchor Books paperback edition of Like Water for Chocolate promote the novel as a romance, one equipped with its own Mexican cookbook to boot. Early scholarly assessments of Esquivel's novel argue that the book is in fact a more complex and less transparent work than the popular presses were willing to grant. Like the culebron it may appear to be, these critics point out, like Water for Chocolate effects a parodic and subversive sweet poison on a whole herd of sacred cows of the literary establishment. A light romance which features the visual joys of Mexican cooking, Arau's film is both sweet and sexy.
