SOURCE: “Brand Loyalties.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 3494 (13 February 1969): 151.

In the following review of The Spark, the critic praises Davie for her ability to create a sinister, macabre atmosphere in her stories, but criticizes her for failing to produce strongly defined characters.

Miss Elspeth Davie is expert at picking the sinister out of the ordinary and at heightening normal situations into something obsessive or macabre. One of the best stories in this collection [The Spark], “The Siege”, begins with a new widow sensibly determining that just because her husband has died she isn't going to halve the intake of her household supplies. After all, the bargains come in the big packets. As shopping gradually takes over her life we watch the stores filling her flat till, notwithstanding a brief sally as a glum advertisement lady for a new breakfast biscuit of which she has bought a record number, we...