 Susannah Clapp in "The Times Literary Supplement" noted that the quality of the novel "depends less on plot or characterization than on the information conveyed about a set of customs and the ideas which underlay them", while Valerie Cunningham in the "New Statesman" called it "a captivating Nigerian novel lovingly but unsentimentally written, about the survival of ancient marriage customs in modern Nigeria" adding that this book "proves Buchi Emecheta to be a considerable writer.