I'm pretty much always looking for the perfect post-apocalypse book. I don't think I've found it yet, but this one comes fairly close. It's surprisingly contemplative, a slow quiet struggle against all the smaller losses that follow the big one, and manages to weave a compelling narrative in the absence of a clear antagonist, which takes some doing. In some places it definitely shows its age -- every time Ish uses DDT to solve a problem, for instance, or every time that "natural" gender roles are baldly stated as obvious facts that nobody would ever question. But much of the story holds together pretty well even for a post-millennial reader. It's interesting, too, to see a story in this genre whose protagonist is an intellectual rather than the military men who seem to take center stage in most of the genre. A lot of the novel seems to be exploring the question of how useful that intellectualism is after civilization falls: whether it can be sustained, and what would be lost if it weren't. I'm glad I read it, and I have a feeling I'll be thinking about it for a long time.