 However, the novel received unfavorable reviews from some American reviewers.A writer for "Kirkus Reviews" stated that although the "first half promises important fiction", the book ends in a "a kinky, symbolic sexual situation which is neither effective as storytelling nor freshly resonant as metaphor”.The reviewer argued, "McEwan seems to be a huge talent constricted by the need to preach, philosophize, or work out private obsessions; and one can only hope that writing beguiling but disappointing essay-stories like this one will free him to write more wide-ranging, full-visioned fiction in the future."