SOURCE: Shrimpton, Nicholas. “Bourgeois v Bohemian.” New Statesman 99, no. 2558 (28 March 1980): 483.

In the following review, Shrimpton considers The Night of the Funny Hats a disappointing collection of stories.

Elspeth Davie won the Katherine Mansfield Prize in 1978 for her story ‘The High Tide Talker’. Seen in that perspective her new collection, The Night of the Funny Hats is, frankly, disappointing. At times her painterly sense of landscape strengthens the character sketches and small parables in which she specialises. Only one story, however, really stands out and that is ‘The Foothold’, an eerie tale set in a shoe shop which cunningly reverses our initial expectations of its imagery.