" How can anyone compete with John Updike's comments in his long appreciation in The New Yorker? Smiley is a good writer; this is an entertaining book if essentially trivial. Her challenge to herself seems to have been, just how explicit can I make the sex and what can I have the people do in between? The answers are, very explicit, and I can have them talk. A lot. The descriptions of the sex are actually so over the top at times that they are just funny. Each of the talkers has a different theme, but they all sound pretty much alike. Producer, star, agent, earnest liberal, foolish conservative, young eco-kid, guru, mysterious Jamaican grandmother, old Hollywood hand who has seen it all. Oh, and a bunch of Russians. All the talk gets these characters beyond stereotype, but there isn't one that you end up liking very much. There are some provisional resolutions, but the interest really lies in the stories these people tell about themselves and, occasionally, about others. I did like the many movie references, and the sense that these people understand themselves only in relation to characters on the screen. "
— Stephen, 1/16/2014