SOURCE: Russell, Brandon. Review of The Short Stories of Elizabeth Spencer, by Elizabeth Spencer. Times Educational Supplement, no. 3519 (9 December 1983): 25.

In the following review, Russell regards Spencer as a representative Southern writer.

Here is the voice of the American South: evocative, rich in imagery, mythic yet free from the sense of doomed history, tainted blood and lost innocence which so often pervades Southern literature. There is rarely guilt in these stories [The Short Stories of Elizabeth Spencer]: they are an affirmation of, and revelling in, the sheer pleasure of simply being. While the characters can recognize pain and doubt in others, they are often quietly grateful to discover its absence in themselves.

Unusual and wonderful images describe that which is familiar: “On the beach, the froth turned brown, the color of softly moving crawfish claws.” The stories appear in the order in which they were written but, early or...