In 2002, Adam Begley of "The Paris Review" listed "The Child in Time" as the beginning of a period in McEwan's career of novels which are "more ambitious than the earlier books, more thoughtful—and equally vivid." Christopher Hitchens stated in 2005 that he still considered the book McEwan's masterpiece. However, Roger Boylan of the "Boston Review" wrote that the novel's powerful moments were mainly in the parts centering on Stephen's loss, dismissing the book as "overly earnest in its concern with exposing corruption in high places. The political becomes rather too personal, and the different aspects of "The Child in Time" undermine rather than support one another. The result is a bit of a mess." In a 2015 article for "The Guardian", Aida Edemariam wrote that the novel "made imaginable something I had not imagined before, and could not now un-think: that in a moment, and without reason, everything can change, and change utterly." Eileen Battersby, who had reviewed the novel positively upon its release, again praised it in 2014 as “a very powerful third novel and also the one which first suggested that McEwan [...] was far more than a gifted master of menace. Suddenly it seemed that a humane spine did in fact sustain all the terror.” She listed the novel as second only to the first 200 pages of "Atonement" (2001) in the author’s oeuvre.