Upon its publication, the novel received generally favorable reviews from a number of writers and critics. Rita Mae Brown's review for the Los Angeles Times found the multiple voices in the novel to be "beautifully realized" and suggested that readers willing to work through the confusions brought about by its fragmented narrative style would ultimately be rewarded by the book's "dazzling sense of humor, rich comic observation and that indefinable quality we call 'heart.'"[1] Bharati Mukherjee, writing for The New York Times, registered disappointment with the love story between George and Cocoa, which she suggested fell short of Naylor's grand Shakespearean ambitions, but nevertheless commended the work as "a big, strong, dense, admirable novel."[2] Rosellen Brown's review for Ms. was lukewarm, describing the plot as "alternately affecting and silly, though never less than interesting" and taking issue with Naylor's "need to elevate by making symbolic, or by fitting everything into a larger scheme" as well as the author's attempts at "didactically fostering our spiritual instruction."[3] Linda Simon of Women's Review of Books commended the originality of Naylor's characters and the book's "amplitude and wit", but her review mainly focused on chiding Naylor for evading important questions about race and gender the novel implicitly raises.[4]
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