How to Cook a Tart

Everything about How to Cook a Tart, the debut novel from Washington Post food writer Nina Killham, is too much. Its heroine, cookbook author Jasmine March, is a rotund creation, a lover of cream and butter and pork and all manner of excess. Food governs her. She's given to ruminations along these lines: "of all the herbs, Jasmine thought, basil was her soul mate. Basil was sensuous, liking to stretch out green and silky under a hot sun with its feet covered in cool soil." Her husband Daniel is having an affair with a woman of the opposite extreme: an actress named Tina who's a skinny-limbed disciple of the Zone diet. Jasmine's daughter Careme is--what else?--an anorexic. Killham pushes these characters off the precipice of probability when Tina is found dead in Jasmine's kitchen, a brownie stuffed in her mouth. This could be a rich comic stew, but though Killham has a firm grasp of cookery, she has poor control over her tone. We're never sure if what we're reading is satire or romance or grotesquerie. It doesn't help that she lifts her conclusion from Roald Dahl. Still, foodie fans of Bon Appétit-style purple prose will find much to admire in the descriptions of Jasmine's kitchen adventures. --Claire Dederer