In "Publishers Weekly", "The Child in Time" was billed as "a beautifully rendered, very disturbing novel", with the reviewer describing the kidnapping scene as "more frightening than any from a horror novel". A reviewer for "Kirkus Reviews" lauded it as "a work of remarkable intellectual and political sophistication--his most expansive and passionate fiction to date", and argued that the novel shows McEwan to be a writer of "narrative daring and imaginative genius". Judy Cooke argued in "The Listener" that the novel drew from the major concerns of its decade a "rich, complicated narrative, its ideas embodied in character and situation, its style fluent and witty, engaging the reader's attention on every page." In "The Spectator", Brian Martin dubbed it McEwan's best book to that point and "a serious novel which has many levels of intention, and provides many pleasures". Jack Slay also described the book as McEwan's finest in his 1996 study of the author's output.