Ian Sansom of "The Guardian" stated "He has a natural-seeming style in which he doesn't so much tell jokes as let his sentences stretch out and relax into feet-up, contented good humour." and "Bryson's descriptions of 50s Des Moines [...] makes you wish that you could emigrate, become a child, get a flat-top haircut and some long-laced baseball boots, and sneak in and take up residence unnoticed with little Billy Bryson in his parents' household." The only complaint Tom Fort of "The Daily Telegraph" made about the autobiography was that "His handicap is that he is entirely free of the malice, the appetite for smut, scandal and unpleasantness — above all, the narcissism — absolutely essential to the form."