[3] Alex Preston, writing for The Guardian, felt that Coe's use of characters spanning multiple generations, covering almost a decade in British history, made him “the first author to address our current crisis of national identity using the form that feels most suited to the task”, contrasting the novelist's work with contemporaneous efforts by Ali Smith and Amanda Craig.

[9] Some reviewers questioned how relevant the more overtly political aspects of the novel would be outside the time of its publication,[7][10] with Leith saying that “certain passages of exposition feel clunky” as a result of Coe's attempt to explain contemporary events such the rise of European populism and advocacy for the Kalergi plan conspiracy theory.

[9] Regarding Coe's political stance, Leith felt that it was a “great big Centrist Dad of a novel” that only asks the reader to sympathise with people who voted Remain in the Brexit referendum.

[9] In his review for Prospect, Ian Sansom called it a “brilliant Brexit novel”, but noted that “everyone who votes for Brexit in the novel [...] is portrayed as either mildly or explicitly racist, and at least a little bit stupid.”[8] By comparison, Jonathan Derbyshire of the Financial Times noted that Coe's writing was interesting for its “ambivalent embrace” of Englishness despite the author's professed Eurocentrism,[7] while Allan Massie in The Scotsman praised the author for showing “abundant sympathy for his characters” and recognizing that “much of the anger at political correctness and the resentment of people who feel no longer at home in their own country [isn’t] unjustified.”[11] Many critics praised the quality of Coe's prose, plotting, characterization and humour.

[12] By comparison, Mark Lawson, writing for Literary Review, felt that Coe had evolved from a more experimental mode to a “low-key prose” style with a “talent for characterisation and captivating narrative”, and that this transformation is echoed in the scene in the novel where “Benjamin’s vast postmodern masterwork becomes, during an editing session, a conventional novella” that goes on to be nominated for the Booker Prize.