In its starred review, Kirkus Reviews wrote, "Rijneveld's extraordinary narrator describes a small world of pain which is hard to look at and harder to ignore." Publishers Weekly wrote, "Like a scene in a Bosch painting, the macabre material is loaded with sexual transgressions, pedophilia, animal torture, and abuse. The onslaught can be numbing, but the translation's soaring lyricism offers mercy for the reader."
