Around the pivotal character of John Singer, a deaf-mute, and around the theme of man's vital craving for a sympathetic, understanding confidant, Miss McCullers drapes the rather loosely woven texture of [The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter], a book flavored with compassion and a gentle melancholy but never with despair….

While Miss McCullers harps perhaps a little too persistently on the one plaintive string of her theme, she leaves several of her people hauntingly engraved in the reader's memory; and she displays a most praiseworthy frankness and lack of affection. The acuteness of character-perception revealed is quite remarkable in an author who … is a girl of twenty-two.

Louis B. Salomon, "Someone to Talk To," in The Nation (copyright 1940 by the Nation Associates, Inc.), July 13, 1940, p. 36.