Having enjoyed James Wilcox's previous comedies about small town life Louisian a style, this reader was looking forward to further helpings of his goof ball humour. Life is full of disappointments, and all this tedious yarn confirmed is that there are few sights sadder than the spectacle of a weakish joke being worked to - and beyond - death. Emily and Clara hit New York and, yep, it keeps hitting back.
Predictably, borind and unfunny with a cast of interchangeable, not so bright losers, the lethargic narrative is suffocated by Wilcox's "everything but the kitchen sink - heck, why not the kitchen sink too?" approach, cloyingly lumbering prose and an embarrassing pursuit of profundity. The message is, small town humour does not transfer to big city. Could this be one of the worst novels I've ever read?
