Esquivel, Laura

Esquivel, Laura ( 1950 –   ),
Mexican writer of best-selling novels. Her first novel Como agua para chocolate ( 1989 , Like Water for Chocolate) fuses a romantic but deferred love affair that ends with death by orgasm with a family saga traced through women in the kitchen, with actual recipes, in a fluent style of exaggerations where metaphors are literal (see magic realism ). Esquivel scripted the film made by ex-husband Alfonso Arau in 1993 . The well-crafted, self-conscious playfulness of Esquivel's La ley del amor ( 1995 ; The Law of Love, 1996 ) includes a CD and comic book sections, in a science fiction format.