In a 2010 article for "The Daily Beast", Lucas Wittman listed "The Comfort of Strangers" as one of the best of McEwan's pre-"Atonement" works, writing, "McEwan perfectly captures the thrill of travel when one is divorced from familiar surroundings and the chance of something unusual and out-of-character seems possible. Of course, this being a McEwan fiction, the possibility is a brutal truth about how people find love in extreme ways." In 2014, Eileen Battersby of "The Irish Times" tied it (with "The Cement Garden") for fifth place in her list of McEwan's best works.