By the time Distortions was published in 1976, Beattie had already established herself as a serious writer of short fiction, regularly placing stories in the influential and prestigious New Yorker. The simultaneous publication of both Distortions and her first novel, Chilly Scenes of Winter, therefore, attracted considerable critical attention.

Beattie's former professor and mentor, the writer J. D. O'Hara, wrote a glowing review of her work in the August 15, 1976, edition of the New York Times, calling Beattie "the best new writer to come down that particular pike since Donald Barthelme." Likewise, David Thorburn, writing for the Yale Review in 1977, commented that Beattie's prose is "not unlike good Hemingway." Susan Horowitz, on the other hand, was less charitable in a review from the August 7, 1976, Saturday Review: "The characters . . . are fleshed out (or, rather, painted by number) in a collection of disjointed details, so that, although they are sometimes...