Like Water For Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

This is an amazingly frustrating story told in an extremely charming way.

Tita is the youngest of three daughters, and is in love with Pedro. Because she’s the youngest, however, she isn’t allowed to marry, and has to take care of her mother until one of them dies. When Pedro asks to marry her, Mama Elena says no, but her middle daughter, Rosaura, is the right age to marry. Pedro says yes on the spot. No one bothers to ask Rosaura what she thinks, but she’s an evil boyfriend thief anyway.

Esquivel has some interesting themes going on here regarding the roles of women in Mexican families, but they’re buried in pitting the Evil Mother and Evil Sister against the Virtuous Heroine. While Pedro isn’t held up as completely innocent in the misery of Tita’s life, he’s still written as her co-protagonist against all the other evil women. (I mean, seriously, married her sister! He loved her so much he didn’t think twice about making both women miserable by having them all live in the same house so his wife could know he married her to be with someone else and the one he loved could see them married while she was treated like a servant! But Rosaura’s worse for being mad and petty about her husband being in love with her sister.)

I watched this in Spanish class in college, and hated every single character except for a doctor who’s in love with Tita (But he’s wrong for her because…she knew Pedro first? I don’t know. That triangle is almost as infuriating as the main one!) and the oldest sister, who runs away to become a revolutionary. The book didn’t make me like any of them more.

On the other hand, there’s the magical realism. When Tita cries into the food she makes, everyone is sad when they eat it. When she uses the petals of roses Pedro gives her in a recipe, people are filled with lust. When she cooks for someone she’s angry with, the food is bitter, causes flatulence, and tastes foul. Between each chapter there’s the ingredients of a recipe, and the chapter begins with the narrator giving the directions, and then segueing into the narration. I would start every chapter utterly charmed, and then be clenching the book in frustration by the end of the chapter.

kdrama: Dae Jang Geum eps 19-27

This is the kdrama that I was watching when I completely got distracted from dramas for a year. (I finished the first DVD set, then got distracted while waiting for the second.) Though I’ve reached the point where the drama doesn’t think it needs to explain the ranking and position of characters who have been around since the episodes were in the single digits, I didn’t have much trouble remembering the various positions, rankings, (Yay for color coded clothing! And hats!) schemings, and relationships.

The series basically takes the Epic (Male) Hero (Revenge) Quest template and converts it to a politically driven series about women and cooking, though the main character is supposed to eventually become Korea’s first female royal doctor. (I’m at the halfway mark, and there’s no sign of that coming anytime soon.) It’s a bit slowly paced (though it looks like that may be changing soon) but I watched 9 hour-long episodes in 2 days, so it obviously isn’t too big a problem for me.

Jang Geum herself is still a little too perfect for me-even her flaws are just there to show how amazing she is, and it seems that good things only happen as a direct result of her actions, even if the action is supposed to be a mistake-but I still like her. However, with the exception of Keum-Young, I find that I prefer the “older” court ladies in motherly and mentor positions to the younger one. And the queen, who finally got to do a bit here, and is awesome. I’m also surprisingly fond of Inspector Min, given that he really is mostly there to be The Boyfriend. I think it’s because while nice an honorable and noble and etc. male leads in historical kdramas aren’t uncommon in my experience (period kdrama men > modern kdrama men, and with more fun issues*) he’s the first one I’ve encountered who’s all well-adjusted and doesn’t come with tons of baggage. (It’s ok, Jang Geum has enough for both of them)

( spoilers )

*Historical kdrama man: “I angst and push you away and am cold because we are of different classes and it is illegal for at least one of us to wed and we could get executed, and by the way, there are a dozen assassins after me and your brother and his army hate me.” Modern kdrama man: “I angst and push you away and am cold because my parents were too busy running a corporate empire for movie night and so I suffered my childhood in privileged luxury and now suffer the agony of people expecting me to be responsible, and I’m having trouble deciding between you and mooning over the woman who dumped me ages ago and just came back.”