There seems to be a pattern developing here. Like many readers, I have a shortlist of authors whose new writings are anticipated for months and purchased immediately following publication. Then I sometimes find myself reading all sorts of other material, while I engage in a bit of hoarding and delayed gratification. I suppose it’s simply a matter of postponing the inevitable final pages – after all, it’s impossible to finish a book that hasn’t been opened. Crazy, but I think that’s why MaddAddam, by Margaret Atwood, took up residence here a year ago and remained unread until recently – after all, it wasn’t just a single book, but the conclusion of a trilogy that began over ten years ago.

Margaret Atwood’s tale started with Oryx and Crake in 2003 and continued with The Year of the Flood in 2009. She describes of her work as speculative, rather than science, fiction: the story and characters are futuristic, but they are, as described on the book jacket, grounded in a recognizable world.

Atwood chills us with her (clever) names: CorpSeCorps (security), HelthWyzer (health and wellness), Extinctathon (online game), OrganInc Farms, BlyssPluss pills (sexual ecstasy, birth control and prolonged youth, all in one), AnooYoo Spa, God’s Gardeners, ChickyNobs and SecretBurgers, then dazzles us with passages like this: “They set out the next morning just at sunrise. . . Crows are passing the rumours, one rough syllable at a time. The smaller birds are stirring, beginning to cheep and trill; pink cloud filaments float above the eastern horizon, brightening to gold at the lower edges. Some days the sky looks like old paintings of heaven: there should be a few angels floating around, their white robes deployed like the skirts of archaic debutantes, their pink toes daintily pointed, their wings aerodynamically impossible. Instead, there are gulls.”

As I shelved MaddAddam I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe I should have read just a bit slower.