Cyril Connolly wrote two reviews at the time of the novel's publication. In the "Daily Telegraph" he described it as a "savage and bitter book", and wrote that "the truths which the author propounds are so disagreeable that one ends by dreading their mention." In the "New Statesman" he wrote that it gave "a harrowing and stark account of poverty", and referred to its "clear and violent language, at times making the reader feel he is in a dentist's chair with the drill whirring".