[14] Chris Cleave in Financial Times called the book "loveable, unique and thrillingly uncategorisable ... an extraordinary and peculiarly haunting novel.’[15] Colin Greenland, however, in The Guardian, felt that "the world outside is ... contrived and confused ... [and that this] perilously weakens [McCleen's] argument".,[16] and Ron Charles, in The Washington Post, felt "Much of the language here is too flat and pedestrian.

[18] Hepzibah Anderson in The Observer found "sentences here of such agile cleverness, charged with wit and beauty and enchantment.

[20] Sam Kitchener in The Telegraph said of The Offering that "Huge questions, of faith, time, reality, individual responsibility and human sexuality are given pained and peculiar answers".

[21] Max Liu in The Independent wrote that "Some of the dense, descriptive passages are frustrating to read but difficulty is one of this novel’s enduring themes".

[22] McCleen has said that she is influenced by Marilynne Robinson, Cormac McCarthy, W. G. Sebald, Thomas Mann, Virginia Woolf, Emily Dickinson, T.S.

Eliot, Walt Whitman, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Franz Kafka and the novel Moby-Dick by Herman Melville .