Contemporary reviews of the book were generally positive.
Christopher Lehmann-Haupt thought it a response to criticisms of a lack of self confidence in her previous autobiographical work,
An Unfinished Woman, and thought it was an extremely revealing about Hellman. Hellman and Gardiner had the same lawyer (
Wolf Schwabacher) who had been privy to Gardiner's memoirs. The events depicted in the film conformed to those described in Gardiner's 1983 memoir
Code Name Mary. An investigation by Samuel McCraken into the particulars of Hellman's Julia story that was published in
Commentary in June 1984 concluded that the funeral home in London where Hellman said Julia's body was sent did not exist, there was no record that Hellman had sailed to England to claim Julia's body on the ship she said she had made the transatlantic crossing on, and there was no evidence that Julia had lived or died. Furthermore, McCracken found it highly unlikely, as did Gardiner, who had worked with the anti-fascist underground, that so many people would have been used to help Hellman get money to Julia, or that money would be couriered in the way that Hellman said it did as Hellman admitted that Julia received money from the
J. P. Morgan Bank.
Ephraim London, Hellman's attorney in her libel suit against
Mary McCarthy (who had publicly questioned Hellman's veracity, including her "Julia" story), admitted that while he believed that there had been a real Julia, Hellman has most likely dramatized her story and added incidents and plot elements that were not strictly true. ==References==