Focusing on a series of moments from his life, the book uses traditional fictional devices, while also delving deeply into the author's psyche. The book established Conroy's reputation as a writer.
Conroy has that subtle sense of the proportion of things which one usually finds only in established writers just after the mellowing of their career." Critic Michael Dirda wrote, "In a 2002 issue of The Week magazine the critic James Atlas calls Frank Conroy's 'Stop-Time' the 'best book ever written on what it's like to be a boy growing up in postwar America.'"