This novel was so much fun. It's thoroughly silly: the dialogue is off-the-wall, with extremely heavy dialects. It's extremely funny, both on the sentence level and the overarching plot.
You have to be willing to accept the unbelievable – but affecting – characters and the very distinct writing style. If you do, I think this is about as entertaining as a novel can get.
This has a fascinating backstory and a wild history of misfires trying to adapt the book into a film: John Goodman, Will Farrell, Zach Galifianakis, and John Belushi have all been proposed to play the main character, Ignatius. But it resists adaptation. Maybe it's haunted. Or maybe this book is a demonstration of a particular level of humor that works better on the page than it does on film.
This is a hoot – I recommend it