FICTION

LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE by Laura Esquivel (Doubleday: $17.50; 246 pp.) Readers ought to support this first novel by a Mexico City author if for no other reason than that she began as a screenwriter and then turned to prose. Since so much of the traffic in Hollywood travels in the other direction, perhaps we should encourage anyone who swims upstream. (OK, she’s written a screenplay adaptation of her novel, but why give it to a stranger?) Esquivel’s story of Tita, victim of a tradition that requires the youngest daughter not to marry but to stay home and care for her mother, is a wondrous, romantic tale, fueled by mystery and superstition, as well as by the recipes that introduce each chapter. Tita watches her beloved Pedro marry her older sister, and worse yet, she must bake the wedding cake; years later they are finally united in a scene that manages to be both comic and deeply moving. If Nora Ephron gave us food for vengeful thought in “Heartburn,” Esquivel has given us a banquet. Women in turn-of-the-century Mexico may be tied down to a life of domesticity, but Tita turns around and finds freedom there; a gift for future generations.