In 2010, Sam Jordison in The Guardian called Troubles "a work of genius", and "one of the best books" of the second half of the twentieth century.

[1] "Had [Farrell] not sadly died so young," Salman Rushdie said in 2008, "there is no question that he would today be one of the really major novelists of the English language.

"[2] The novel concerns the arrival of the English Major Archer, recently discharged from the British Army, at the Majestic Hotel on the County Wexford coast in south-east Ireland in 1919.

Archer functions as a confused observer of the dysfunctional Spencer family, representing the Anglo-Irish, and the local Catholic population.

Other characters include: Farrell develops the insulated environment of the run-down hotel as a reflection on the attitudes of the historically privileged Anglo-Irish, in denial of the violent insurgency of the overwhelming majority (Nationalists/Republicans).

William Trevor said in The Guardian on 10 October 1970, that the novel was a "clever book" and "a tour de force of considerable quality.