[It is] as novelist, as pure literary artist, that Mrs. Buck regards herself and prefers to be regarded. It seems worth while, therefore, to consider her books as novels, works of art, to analyze them as fiction, without prejudging them by applying any label. Let us, that is, for a moment forget that Mrs. Buck is famous as "the novelist of China," "the author of those Chinese books," and inquire simply, as with any unknown novelist, into her choice of material and her technique. ...

To understand the wellsprings of her own art, her creativity, [Pearl Buck] had to examine in depth and to explain at length the scope and the limits of her work within the tradition of the Chinese novel. Now that more than twenty-five years have elapsed since her lecture on the Chinese novel before the Nobel Committee, her judgments can be dispassionately reconsidered, objectively commented upon, and critically evaluated. Her conception of the Chinese novel, moreover, can be utilized as a yardstick in an es...

In the following review, Greenfield complains that in Buck's The People of Japan, she "mostly serves up the usual blend of picturesque pap and old saws."

In the following review, Bullock discusses the juxtaposition of Buck's life in China and her life in America.

In the following review, Parton praises the delicacy and restraint of Buck's writing in My Several Worlds.

In the following review, Vining discusses the different strands that weave together to create Buck's A Bridge for Passing.

In the following review, Butcher calls Buck's Command the Morning "one of the most memorable and rewarding reading experiences of our day."

In the following review, Weeks praises Buck's The Three Daughters of Madame Liang as "compassionate, elucidating, and wise."

In the following review, Boatwright argues that, "This essentially romantic portrayal of life weakens and diffuses the force of the author's moral argument [in Command the Morning, which is foursquare on the side of life and against the use of the bomb for destruction…."]

[The standards of the Swedish Academy] are high, but evidently they are also flexible; otherwise it would be difficult to account for the recent award [of the Nobel Prize in Literature] … to Pearl Buck. For Mrs. Buck is clearly not the destined subject of a chapter in literary history, and would be the last to say so herself. She has no series of novels to her credit, like Sinclair Lewis, each one fitting into a pattern of achievement which has become a part of durable American literature. She is not...

In the following review, Clifford discusses Buck's The Living Reed and "regrets that this greatly respected author's use of the arts of fiction can hit so much farther from the mark than her feeling for Asians and her detailing of Asian history."

In the following review, Lipsky asserts that the scientific story dwarfs the human story of Buck's Command the Morning.

In the following review, Weeks states that A Bridge for Passing "will be a touchstone for those made desolate by sorrow, and in writing it Mrs. Buck lifts our spirits as she revives her own."

Like many another woman writer excessively drawn to the kind (and unkind) hearts and coronets scene—or to its American counterpart—Pearl Sydenstricker Buck escaped downright badness only by a hairsbreadth…. Certainly, it's hard now to conceive Miss Buck trawling in a Nobel Prize—and for literature at that—even as a Buggin's Turn candidate in a lean year. [The Woman Who Was Changed, the] latest collection from under the belt of the Pearl S. Buck Foundation Inc...

In the following review, Bristol asserts that Buck's The People of Japan is more of a sentimental look at the country than an in-depth study.

In the following review, Pippett discusses the China portrayed in Buck's The Three Daughters of Madame Liang.

In the following review, Peterson asserts that "The people in Buck's Letter From Peking are informed with magnanimity; and it is this magnanimity, inherent in Miss Buck herself as well as in her characters, that lifts Letter From Peking far above the level of a treatise on understanding and makes it a moving and memorable tale."

In the following review, Long traces the three interwoven elements of Buck's A Bridge for Passing.

In the following review, the critic praises the message and impact of the personal narrative in Buck's My Several Worlds.

In the following review, Butcher asserts that "Pearl Buck has a genius for making readers see pictures and know human beings, often with humor. Nowhere has she used that genius more tellingly than in parts of My Several Worlds."

In the following review, Sullivan complains that the prose is limp and the characterization is weak in Buck's Command the Morning.