The blurb on the back of the New York Review Books edition described The Mangan Inheritance as "melodrama at its most inventive and suggestive, an inquiry into the problem of identity and the nature of ancestry that beguiles the reader with dark deeds, wild humor, and weird goings-on, on its way towards a shocking and terrifying—and utterly satisfying—conclusion".[2]
New York magazine described it as a "wonderful union of clarity and inventiveness".[1]
Patricia Craig, in her biography of Brian Moore, says that The Mangan Inheritance is "among other things, a satire on the impulse to track down one's ancestors, on romantic Ireland, and on poetic pretensions".[3]
