[2] In 2011 she won a Unity Books short story competition with "Clean Hands Save Lives", which was published in a special edition of Sport.
Reviewer Caroline Barron for Stuff said it "demonstrates an advanced tightness of prose, plot, tension and pacing that flings the reader forward, proving McDougall to be a dextrous and talented writer who has really hit her stride".
[10] Philip Matthews called it a "lively, engaging and often hilarious satirical novel", and praised McDougall's creation of a believable dystopian Wellington, "a world that slips easily between the entirely recognisable and the slightly strange".
[12] It was longlisted for the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards; it did not make the shortlist, despite reviewer Steve Braunias noting that it was one of "two novels everyone expected to be on it".
[16] In November 2023 it was included in The Guardian's list of recent best science fiction, fantasy and horror, and described as an "outrageous, comic, disturbingly timely novel".