A quick and enjoyable re-reading of my initiation to the flavors of Latin American magic realism — in anticipation of Salma Hayek’s production of the upcoming series adaptation.
Recommended by my best friend in our early teens, this is the book that led to highschool years enlivened and colored by the novels of Isabel Allende and Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the poetry of Pablo Neruda and Octavio Paz. This is also the book that made the kitchen a more magical place for me.
Reading this with older eyes shows me how much I’ve grown, how much I’ve outgrown, and also how much I did not understand back then: It seems to be oozing with more sensuality now. The romantic passages are no longer what strike me the most. When John Brown encourages Tita to express herself through writing and thereby carving her path to freedom, I realize that nothing Pedro ever did could top that and I was rooting for the wrong man all along. Now I’m no longer concerned about whether the adaptation is faithful to the love story, I’m more concerned about how faithful it is to the kitchen magic.
“My grandmother had a very interesting theory; she said that each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can’t strike them all by ourselves… Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn’t find out what will set off these explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lighted.”
The Book-Butterfly 