Growing up in Mexico, she was educated at Escuela Normal de Maestros. Esquivel was born on September 30, 1950, in Mexico City, the daughter of Julio Caesar, a telegraph operator, and josephine Esquivel. Works in Biographical and Historical ContextĬhild of the “Boom”. Employing the brand of magic realism that Colombian Gabriel Garcia Marquez popularized, Esquivel blends culinary knowledge, sensuality, and alchemy with fables and cultural lore. Like Water for Chocolate was a best seller in the United States. Esquivel merges folk stories, magic realism, and a feminist perspective in her writing, garnering both popular and critical acclaim.

Reproduced by permission.Ī best-selling, highly respected author in her native Mexico, Laura Esquivel’s first book Like Water for Chocolate (Como Agua Para Chocolate, 1991) was a crossover success, earning her an international reputation. The book also includes an 11-track CD of Puccini arias that figure in the plot and some remarkable Mexican ''danzones,'' billed in the text as ''Intervals for Dancing.'' In Azucena, Esquivel has created a delightfully feisty, unpretentious character it is the reader's loss that neither she nor Rodrigo are ever fully developed, and that their love story is repeatedly upstaged by a fantastical setting and long-winded metaphysical discourse. Esquivel punctuates her narrative with full-color ''graphic novel'' segments (by Spanish artist Miguelanxo Prado). As it turns out, this is all part of a divine plan: Azucena's quest to be reunited with her lover sets in motion a chain of events that will lead to the restoration of the law of Love on planet Earth. Alas for her, Rodrigo is not as karmically pure, and the day after their night of bliss, he is framed for murder and deported to the penal planet of Korma. And not a moment too soon not only is Azucena terribly lonely, but she has finally paid off all the karmic debts accumulated in her 14,000 past lives. Composed in a tantalizing style of New Age-sci-fi-magical realism, the tale is set in the year 2200, when astroanalyst Azucena Martinez, who lives in Mexico City, has been permitted at last to meet her twin soul, Rodrigo Sanchez, the man with whom she is to experience the ecstasy of perfect romantic union.

This followup to Esquivel's bestselling Like Water for Chocolate is propelled by the same jolly, reckless storytelling energy that has won the Mexican author so many fans, but skimpy character development and a breathlessly byzantine plot keep bringing the novel up short.

The law of love laura esquivel summary