Here's some literary silliness, courtesy of Jodi Picoult's The Pact:

"Daddy says," Kate beamed, "I can get my ears pierced if it's okay with you. Today. After lunch."

"What a terrific idea!" Gus said, turning to James. "Can you take her?" He did not hear Gus at first, because he was reveling in the smells that she had brought into the stuffy dining room--the wintergreen scent of the snow outside, the apple of her hair conditioner, and the lingering smell of her perfume. But there was something else, something deep and tropical that he could not put a name to ... what was it?

[ ... ]

James sighed and turned toward Kate. "We'll go to the jewelry store after lunch," he told her. He faced his wife again, intending to ask why she'd bothered coming all the way to the restaurant when she was just going right back, but was stopped again by the smell of her. Something was different, he realized. After she visited Chris she always came home smelling of jail, stale and confining, a scent that stayed in her clothes and her skin until they were scrubbed. She had been to visit Chris today, she said, but that smell was missing. There was something else in its place--that exotic element, which James suddenly recognized as the sweet, heated scent of a lie.

So, to paraphrase: if you're talking with your wife and she suddenly starts smelling like mangoes, what you're really smelling is the lie she's just told.

Comments

[Pete]

So I guess the next time I come home from work to find the kitchen full of sweet, heated scents, it doesn't mean my wife has been diligently baking something delicious all afternoon, but instead that she's lying to me. Thank you, Dr. Picoult.

[Brandon]

This is exactly why I can't take Picoult seriously. Her writing is simultaneously overarching and lazy.

[Citizen Reader]

God, do I hate Jodi Picoult. It makes me so sad that this is what passes for bestselling "literature" these days.

[Brandon]

I agree. "The Pact" is still quite humorous, though. When I came to the above passage, I started laughing.