In a review for The Guardian, Peter Conrad noted that Didion describes the South to "a metaphorical landscape, America’s heart of darkness"; "colonial, obsessed with disparities of “race, class, heritage”"; and its wilderness as "rank, malevolent, encroaching everywhere."[1] As for California, Conrad highlights, "the ground is abandoned altogether by blissed-out, irreligiously mystical individuals."[1]
In The Atlantic, Megan Garber wrote that the book was "an act of radical humility—an offering of literary detente from a writer who so perfected the art of secret bullying."[2]
Reviewing it for The New York Times, author Laila Lalami notes, "There is no plot in “South and West,” or conflict, or ending. The pleasures of this short book, rather, are found in observing the South through Didion's eyes."[3]