McCullers is ranked among the most respected writers in the southern tradition. She is often compared with William Faulkner, Flannery O'Connor, Eudora Welty, and Tennessee Williams. Today, critics continue to revisit her few novels as important writings. Critics consistently praise The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, The Ballad of the Sad Cafe, and The Member of the Wedding as her best works.

While most critics praise The Member of the Wedding, others claim that McCullers ends the story with plot developments that are too convenient. Louis D. Rubin Jr. of the Virginia Quarterly Review finds Frankie's sudden acceptance of womanhood unrealistic and John Henry's death gratuitous and contrived. Edmund Wilson of the New Yorker writes in 1946 that the book was "utterly pointless" and lacked a sense of drama. It was this review that so incensed McCullers that she was inclined to take Tennessee Williams's advice and...