It's not really caving in...not yet anyway. Here in New York we are getting our 23rd snow storm in the last few weeks. Okay, it's probably the 5th or 6th, but it sure feels like more. On top of all that snowy joy we are going to get an inch or so of ice to seal it in real nice.
JASMINE MARCH, the zaftig heroine of this wickedly funny first novel, is a Washington cookbook writer who pines for the days of Louis XIV, ''when men were gluttons and proud of it.'' Jasmine herself has a prodigious appetite: her husband, Daniel, fell for her when he spotted her eating a tarragon chicken croissant with near orgasmic rapture. Jasmine moisturizes with olive oil, perfumes herself with truffle oil and has explored the erotic potential of snail butter.
On the book's first page, Jasmine discovers a corpse (the tart of the title) sprawled on her kitchen floor, bludgeoned to death with a rolling pin, a homemade brownie stuffed in its mouth. The book is nominally a whodunit, but the madcap, faintly macabre plot is really just a vehicle for Nina Killham's witty social observations.
I own this book, as well as Nina's other two, Mounting Desire and Believe Me, however since I'm packing to move they're in a box in my bedroom where I can't get at them. This was easily fixed by downloading it onto my Kindle.
My son is now shoveling the deck so the next round of snow and ice won't be too much for it to handle. My daughter is shoveling a walkway for the dog since we'll lose her in the drifts otherwise. I'd be out there too if I didn't have the spinal infrastructure from hell - so I'd better go clean or pack something before everyone hates me. After I'm finished though - I'm going back to the Kindle.
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