Tales of the South Pacific reads like a novel, with its strong unity of mood and background and with its reappearing characters, notably Bus Adams and Tony Fry. It is a wide-ranging book—ranging over the whole strange and beautiful world of the South Pacific and over a gallery of characters that include pompous naval commanders and tattooed Seabees, aloof French planters and raffish Tonkinese. It ranges also in emotion, from tedium to the fury of battle on coral beaches, from broad comedy to loneline...

James A. Michener won the Pulitzer Prize in 1947 for his first novel, Tales of the South Pacific. It can be predicted that he will not receive a second Pulitzer for his new novel and twenty-third book, The Covenant…. It can also be predicted that … the novel will soar to the top of the best-seller lists in this country and be read and admired all over the world. Michener's reputation among critics has declined—even as his popularity has soared—since Tales of the South Paci...

James A. Michener's postwar literary output now includes four books, of which Tales of the South Pacific, the first, is immeasurably the best. (p. 152) [The loosely linked short stories] were amazingly good, fresh, simple and expert in their presentation, humorous, engrossing and even moving. They all were distinguished by an unusual combination of thoughtful insight appealing to mature minds and old-fashioned storytelling, which made the most of exotic local color. Mr. Michener was adroit in his man...