Time Magazine has said, "A hilarious book....In it, literary gamesmanship and self-consciousness are trained on life's most unendurable experience, used to examine a memory that is too scorching to stare at, as one views an eclipse by projecting sunlight onto paper through a pinhole." The New York Times says about "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius", 'A virtuosic piece of writing, a big, daring, manic-depressive stew of a book that noisily announces the debut of a talented---yes, staggeringly talented new writer.'