[citation needed] Reviewing Mulvihill's first novel, Natural Selection (1985), Eden Ross Lipson wrote in The New York Times: "The plotting may be operetta-awkward, but the prose is often wicked and consistently amusing.
"[1] Hilary Bailey reviewed Mulvihill's second novel, Low Overheads (1987), in The Guardian: "Margaret Mulvihill is a natural writer and bounds along comically with verve and energy, side-swiping St Perrier and the blessed Placenta and many other targets as she runs.
"[2] Mary Morrissy wrote in The Independent about Mulvihill's third novel, St Patrick's Daughter (1994): "Mulvihill has a deft comic touch and a sure hand with verbal slapstick.
The irreverent subtext, littered with the superstitious vocabulary of the catechism – purgatory, baptisms of desire, the children of Fatima - brings alive the world of Irish Catholicism, in all its richness and trumpery, far more effectively than a grim dose of realism.
[citation needed] She was a UEA Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia in 1989.