"The Anatomy Lesson" is the least well-received of the Zuckerman trilogy "Zuckerman Bound", though the book was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award.In "The Observer" in 1984, Martin Amis wrote, "'The Anatomy Lesson' may be the third and final installment of the Zuckerman trilogy, but it is also Roth's second consecutive novel about what success is like.