WARNING: Some spoilers!
There is no way around it: you have to like nonlinearity, digression clever word play, and randomness to like this book. Do henchman-mimes do it for you? If they do, you'll like this book. Do you like the idea of Bruce Willis getting his groin bit off?
Luckily, I enjoy these types of things from time to time. And I can suspend my disbelief long enough to get through a bizzaro book (is that the right term?) like this one.
You have to suspend more than your disbelief, you also have to suspend your sense of scale. You have to believe, for example, that Abrams Tanks can pulled out of someone's pocket on a second's notice.
As for the main character--though the book is abstract and bizzaro, it also has a hard-boiled detective. I'm not sure this is the fairest comparison, but the main character/ narrator reminded me a lot of Fletch. You remember, the 80s Chevy Chase detective with the one-liners (it was also a novel). That's not a bad thing. Fletch was probably the last great Chevy Chase movie ever made.
I also think linguists would like this book. The most enjoyable part of this book for me was having to watch carefully everything I read. The author constantly tricks you into misreading everything. One example is when the character says he comes in "guns a-blazing." You have to be suspicious enough at this point so that you're not caught off guard a paragraph later when he's trying to put out the fire that has started because of his guns.
In short if you like word play, random references, random everything, silliness, and Fletch one-liners, this book will probably be for you.
