Meh.

I don't think this book even knows what it wanted to be. For the most part, it feels like a satire of post-apocalyptic fiction--flu meets nuclear bomb meets ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE, or something--and suddenly upstate New York reverts to the 19th century. (More so than it already has.) None of the timelines add up to anything possible, but you quickly get to ignore that.

Except in between being satirical, it gets bizarrely dark and gruesome a couple of times, and also twists in some kind of strange fantasy element of...magic? supernaturalism? the wrath of God personified? I have no idea.

The best way I can think to read this is as a series of vignettes--65 chapters in 317 pages--of a confused, old man, nostalgic for a lost world, and increasingly drunk and high as the stories progress. Read that way, it was almost enjoyable, with, well, the exceptions noted above.