The characters in [The Wind Changes] form a self-conscious and self-tortured triangle, the love-relation … which gives the story its substance. Much is made of irrational motivation—indeed, the characters scarcely do anything from rational motives—but Miss Manning's subtleties far exceed the crude posturings before a mental mirror which most novelists mistake for the exploration of the unconscious.

Despite these passages, despite passages of exquisite descriptive writing and style wonderfully flexible, the novel does not rise into importance…. [The] trio lacks moral significance. [The] velleities, [the] shifts of mood and decision, however intricately described, never amount to an important decision; and unfortunately conduct is still four-fifths of a novel.

Howard Mumford Jones, "Novelist's Novel," in The Saturday Review, London, Vol. XVII, No. 24, April 9, 1938, p. 12.