Heavy Water and Other Stories - Reception

Reception

The book was widely praised upon publication.

• In The New York Times Book Review, critic A.O. Scott wrote that "the publication of Heavy Water, a gathering of nine stories, most of them published in this decade, nearly half in The New Yorker, provides a good opportunity to state plainly what has been apparent for some time: Martin Amis is the best American writer England has ever produced." Scott praised Amis's "reckless bravado and his terrifying cleverness, both of which are abundantly evident." Commenting on the strict premises (swapped literary reputations, reversed norms), he wrote, "Some of the most interesting stories seem to have been written on a dare, or as entries in a contest to see who could get the best results from the worst ideas."
• In the London Times, Russell Celyn Jones found the stories demonstrating Amis's "maturation," and called the book "highly inventive, inimitably stylish and funny, exhibiting a wider voice range than in anything he has done so far."
• In The Times Literary Supplement, Tom Shone wrote, "As this collection demonstrates, Amis's own sentences could not be more different: whipping through the gearbox with seamless ease. Amis has famously said that his ambition is to write the sort of sentences that no other guy could write. The same thing applies to his work as applies to that of every other guy; when he is writing well, his sentences appear to have written themselves."
• In the Evening Standard, Rachel Cusk found, "As Amis's commitment to his writing has deepened, so its critical treatment has grown more facetious. As he has become more meticulous, so his critics have grown lazier."
• Michael Dirda, in the Washington Post, called the stories, "Funny, sexy, disturbing, tantalizing, sharply satirical, even wistful."