This is one of those books that I put off reading because I knew it was going to be so good. I’m a depressive, and sometimes exposing yourself to a truly great writer and a truly great book makes it difficult to keep the shields up and stop yourself responding to the emotions generated by reading it. It’s tough enough to keep an even keel as it is. I paid the price for this, along with one or two others, but it was worth it in the end. Certainly the best science fiction novel of the new century, if not one of the all-time greats. A beautiful, heartbreaking, hopeful joy of a book. I have this fantasy that maybe The bloody Tubridy Show on Radio One will adopt it for their book club and it’ll sell loads and the world will genuinely become a better place as a result. If the plain people of Ireland could handle Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, they could sure as hell handle this, is what I think.