My friend recommended this to me because he and all of his friends passed it around and loved it. So I acknowledge that I may be wrong.

But this book was so incredibly boring that I would have given up after 10% if it hadn't been recommended by a friend. Hig, the protagonist, is the kind of guy who you wouldn't have looked at twice and may have even actively avoided in social situations -- you know the type -- "Oh God there's Hig talking about fishing again my God doesn't he ever think to ask what other people are up to how does he not see our eyes glazing over every time he opens his stupid mouth", and he was not a good choice to lead this book. I get that Heller was trying to get you to think about an everyman in a post-apocalyptic world, nine years after most of humanity died from a human-engineered flu disaster, I get it, I really do. But Hig is so stupid and dull that he is impossible to root for. I found myself wishing he would die just so I wouldn't have to go on reading about him.

The style of Heller's writing is, like his choice of narrator, obnoxious and overly meta. I love books that are stylistic -- loved Feed and A Clockword Orange. In both of those books, the language helped you understand the world the characters were in. In this book, it felt like Heller trying to impress his English professor at the expense of the rest of the class. If your "style" includes sentences that aren't clear until you go back and re-read them whether it is Hig's thought, Hig's speech, another character's speech, or the narrator, you have failed. Your reader is no longer in the story, they are fighting your stylistic choices.