sentences: "The Times" called it "a harmless, conventional little anecdote, well-tailored but uninvolving"; "The Guardian" a "disquieting" novel about "really nasty people living in a really nice little coastal town"; and "The Times Literary Supplement", while calling it "marvellously piercing", pigeonholed it as an example of "the Beryl Bainbridge school of anguished women's fiction".Auberon Waugh in the "Evening Standard" publicly advised her to write longer books.