Pretty much what I expected from the reviews, and definitely worth a read if you're up for a short, harrowing, post-apocalyptic novel. Warnings to note: Horror and graphic unpleasantness and allusions to rape, but no vividly described sexual violence. One more note that might be relevant to my f-list: I found this edition (hardback, Picador, 2009) quite physically difficult to read in the longer paragraphs: something about the combination of large widely-spaced text and right justification. If that's a consideration for you, perhaps an ebook might work better, or check out the other editions.