["The Good Earth" is] a parable of the life of man, in his relation to the soil that sustains him. The plot, deliberately commonplace, is given a sort of legendary weight and dignity by being placed in an unfamiliar setting. The biblical style is appropriate to the subject and the characters. If we define a masterpiece as a novel that is living, complete, sustained, but still somewhat limited in its scope as compared with the greatest works of fiction—if we define it as "Wuthering Heights" rather than "War and Peace"—then ["The Good Earth" is a masterpiece].

But it wasn't intended to stand alone…. Miss Buck planned to write three novels that would fit together and become a sort of Chinese "Buddenbrooks."

"Sons," the second novel, is a long step toward achieving this purpose. Considered by itself, I'm not sure that it isn't even better than "The Good Earth."… Once again the plot falls into a legendary pattern, since the career of Wang the Tiger is based on one of the oldest and most exciting stories in Chinese folklore, that of the Good Bandit…. Besides this drama, the book has a quality that one doesn't associate with Pearl Buck—a rather earthy humor, most of it rising from the contrast between the traditional place of Chinese women—who are supposed to be household slaves—and the real power that they exercise over their lazy and self-indulgent husbands.

But "A House Divided" is a different story. It doesn't matter whether you judge it by itself or by what it contributes to the trilogy; in either case it is surprisingly inferior….

Its most obvious weakness is its style. In the course of the three novels, Miss Buck has changed her setting from past to present, from an old walled city to modern Shanghai…. Meanwhile her style has remained the same; if anything, her mannerisms out of the King James Version have become exaggerated. They seemed appropriate to Wang the Farmer and even Wang the Tiger, both figures in a legend; but they are out of place in the Shanghai drawing room of Wang the Landlord. (p. 24)

And the plot of "A House Divided" is essentially even weaker than its style. Miss Buck has always had trouble constructing a novel that deals with contemporary material, partly because of her strong sense of fidelity to the events that actually happened; she refuses to rearrange them into a harmonious pattern. Her best books have been parables or legends. But even a writer used to inventing plots would have been baffled by the problem she set herself in "A House Divided." She explains in the foreword … that she wanted to trace the original vigor of Wang Lung as it reappeared in his descendants. "That vigor, first found in one figure, is dissipated, as time goes on, into many sons and many places. In 'A House Divided' the vigor seems quite scattered." But how could anybody make a unified novel out of such material?… The truth is that her trilogy does not end at all. It declines into mere scaffolding, then stops in the middle like a great unfinished bridge. (pp. 24-5)

"The Patriot," is based on the same material as "A House Divided."…

From the very first, "The Patriot" seems a better novel, partly because Miss Buck is now writing modern prose, with extreme simplicity as its only mannerism, but also because of a greater subtlety and detachment in handling her material. The Wu family seems to belong in Shanghai—unlike the Wangs—and the political background is more credible. The second part of the novel, which passes in Japan, is an even greater improvement over "A House Divided." Miss Buck does something here that very few Western novelists would even attempt: she describes the impressions of a Chinese visitor to Japan and his courtship of a Japanese woman. Without being able to pass on the ultimate truth of her picture, I found it altogether convincing….

"A House Divided" is a failure that ought to be destroyed. In its place, Miss Buck should put "The Patriot"; she would have to change the names of the characters and their family trees, but not much else. (p. 25)