Chris Petit of "The Guardian" reviewed the book in 2001, and called it "dreamily convincing", elaborating: "A main inspiration would have been the slew of Hollywood movies that opened in Paris after the liberation, identified by the French as films noirs. "I Spit"... is straight noir, but also a work of liberated imagination after four years of Nazi occupation: heady, abandoned, fevered and lubricious. A fusion of prime US pulp and French sado-eroticism[.]"