WHAT’S WRONG WITH AMERICA by Scott...

WHAT’S WRONG WITH AMERICA by Scott Bradfield (Picador: $10; 196 pp.). Scott Bradfield’s darkly funny novel is written as a series of journal entries by Emma O’Hallahan, a sort of verbal equivalent of the feisty little old ladies in George Booth’s New Yorker cartoons. Fed up after 45 years of marriage to the archly conservative Marvin, she blasts the old curmudgeon with his shotgun and buries him in the backyard. Free at last, Emma finds her life complicated by the intrusions of a snoopy neighbor, her hippie-prippy daughter, an amorous banker and a friendly cop. As he builds to a surprising denouement, Bradfield balances his black humor with Emma’s bleak reflections on her life and marriage.