During the 1930s, Callaghan's short stories were highly regarded by critics and reviewers. His work was compared to that of Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov, both of whom were masters of the short-story form.

Wyndham Lewis favorably reviews the collection Now That April's Here and Other Stories, in which "All the Years of Her Life" appeared. The following comment from Lewis's review, which appears in Brandon Conron's Morley Callaghan, captures the essence of "All the Years of Her Life": "These are tales very full of human sympathy—a blending of all the events of life into a pattern of tolerance and mercy." Lewis admires the way almost all the stories in Now That April's Here and Other Stories end gently on a note of reconciliation.

Conron notes that the relationship between parents and children is the theme of many of the stories in...