What's Wrong With America - Hardcover

Bradfield, Scott

3.42

62 ratings by Goodreads

9780312113490: What's Wrong With America

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312113498 ISBN 13: 9780312113490

Publisher: St Martins Pr, 1994

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A pointedly funny satire of modern America chronicles the picaresque adventures of Emma O'Hallan after she shoots her boring husband in the head and goes off to encounter a land of serial killers, cult leaders, dysfunctional families, and contented consumers

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From Kirkus Reviews:

In this dark and unfunny novel, Bradfield (Dream of the Wolf, 1990, etc.) writes the ``memoirs'' of a pathetic old woman who tries to gain control of her life by killing her mean and domineering husband. Unfortunately for Emma O'Hallahan, who has already committed the murderous act when the book begins, the cost of her freedom seems to be her sanity, which gradually slips away during the writing of her autobiography. What's the use of shooting your husband with a shotgun and burying him in the backyard, for example, if he keeps on appearing in the house--in various states of decomposition--and treating you as abusively as he did when he was alive? No matter how many stakes and bullets Emma puts in him, Marvin will not stay put. In addition to the annoying ghost, Emma also has her snooping neighbor, Mrs. Stansfield, to contend with--or dispose of. The freshly turned mounds of earth in the backyard multiply, until one day Emma counts four: She knows one is Marvin, one is Mrs. Stansfield, and one is the money from her and Marvin's joint bank account. But what's underneath the fourth? Emma is afraid she may have killed her grandson Teddy, who was coming to pay her a visit, or maybe her new boyfriend, whom she calls Mr. Sullivan (even in their most intimate moments) and was very anxious to get rid of the first time he came over for dinner. Although Emma fills her time by writing in her journal and entertaining the many guests--alive, dead, and imaginary--who arrive at her door, she is not fulfilled. She doesn't know how to end her memoirs or what to make of the newly dug fifth hole in the backyard. Could it be for Emma herself? An imaginative story, but after the initial shock wears off, the comedy dies and Emma becomes merely annoying. -- Copyright �1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

From Booklist:

Murder provides the central action in What's Wrong with America, though (as in Greek drama) the violence itself occurs offstage. Bradfield's satirical take on life in suburban Southern California--Dynamo Valley, no less!--is cast as the journal of 69-year-old Emma O'Hallahan, to be read after her death by her estranged progeny. Emma begins writing the day she blasts Marvin, her mean and miserable retired-executive husband of 45 years, with his own 12-gauge shotgun and buries him in the backyard. Her journal traces Emma's liberation, the reappearance of Marvin as dream or ghost, and Emma's encounters with neighbors, a new love, and various long-lost relatives. Although Bradfield's murder victims are obnoxious and his killers lovable if a bit ditsy, murder as a highly effective problem-solving technique necessarily raises serious moral questions. But What's Wrong with America dissects these ethical issues with compassion and wit (and lots of surprises) in a fast, funny skewering of the fads and foibles of middle-class "life in these United States" in the late twentieth century. Mary Carroll

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