The English author and critic Julie Myerson wrote in the Guardian that "if this book has a central subject, it's the relationship between thought and art".

Smith explores different artists throughout the book including the surrealists, William Shakespeare, and Jackie Kay.

[5] On Bookmarks May/June 2013 issue, reported on reviews from several publications with ratings for the novel out of five: San Francisco Chronicle gave it a five, NY Times Book Review and New York Times gave it a four, and AV Club gave it a three with a critical summary saying, "Real art will hold us at all our different ages like it held all the people before us and will hold all the people after us, in an elasticity and with a generosity that allow for all our comings and goings," Smith writes in an attempt at articulating why great art hits us in just the right way, a goal that she mostly meets".

Or – to go back to Dickens – a gorgeous and artfully dodging work of "shifting possibility".

Or, in the words of Katherine Mansfield who, on finishing DH Lawrence's Aaron's Rod, compared it to a tree "firmly planted, deep thrusting, outspread, growing grandly, alive in every twig.