Rita Mae Brown's review for " 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 .'" 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 . " Rosellen Brown's review for " Ms . " offered a lukewarm review, 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 . " 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.
