An American editor, Smith is the author of the 1990 Real Life Drama: The Group Theatre and America, 1931–1940. In the following essay, based in part on conversations with McDermott, she provides an overview of McDermott's career as well as her insights into the writing process.

Leavitt is an American novelist and short story writer. In the review below, he asserts that the "baroque richness of Ms. McDermott's sentences, the intellectual complexity of her moral vision, and the explicit emotion of her voice" distinguish That Night from other novels treating similar themes and incorporating suburban settings.

In the following review, Pool praises McDermott's vivid depiction of family closeness and the mounting emotional power of her narrative in At Weddings and Wakes as well as the novel's inherent realism.

In the following review, Baumann commends McDermott's evocation of daily life and family ties in At Weddings and Wakes.

In the following review, Watkins maintains that although McDermott's narrator often distracts readers from the characters whose story she is recounting, That Night powerfully represents the loss and longing that ensue from the aging process.

Brown is an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. In the excerpt below, she admires the tight construction of That Night as well as McDermott's poignant insistence on the inevitability of loss.

In the following review, Eder appreciates McDermott's use of period detail and complex narration in At Weddings and Wakes.

Klinkenborg is an editor and nonfiction writer. In the following review, he provides a highly favorable assessment of At Weddings and Wakes.

Towers is an American novelist. In the excerpt below, he commends the accuracy with which McDermott recreates a lower-middle-class Long Island town during the early 1960s as well as her focus on the ordinary in That Night, but he questions the book's merit as a contender for the National Book Award for Fiction.

An American critic, Eder received a 1987 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism and a 1987 citation for excellence from the National Book Critics Circle. In the following review of That Night, he lauds McDermott's fresh, detailed evocation of suburbia as well as the characterization of her female protagonist.

An American critic, Kakutani is a regular contributor to The New York Times. In the following mixed review of That Night, Kakutani asserts that while McDermott's failure to clarify the relationship between her narrator and the events she recounts proves confusing, this weakness does not diminish the novel's elegiac appeal.

An American novelist, short story writer, critic, and editor, Tyler won a National Book Critics Circle Award for The Accidental Tourist (1985) and a Pulitzer Prize for her Breathing Lessons (1988). In the following, she offers a mixed assessment of A Bigamist's Daughter and maintains that, despite its occasionally fatuous characterization, the novel effectively demonstrates how childhood experiences determine adult expectations of love.

In the following review, Kakutani praises McDermott's use of children as narrators in At Weddings and Wakes and her thematic focus on loss.

In the following positive review of A Bigamist's Daughter, Harvey commends McDermott's refusal to sentimentalize her characters' loneliness.

In the following review, Wood praises McDermott's matter-of-fact depiction of love in A Bigamist's Daughter, but maintains that her secondary characters are underdeveloped.

In the excerpt below, Balliett, an American critic who frequently writes about jazz, praises McDermott's use of language and pacing in That Night.