SOURCE: Rudman, Frank. Review of The Night of the Funny Hats, by Elspeth Davie. Spectator 244, no. 7916 (29 March 1980): 25.

In the following review of The Night of the Funny Hats, Rudman lauds Davie's stories, which he considers charming, humorous, and beautiful.

The Night of the Funny Hats is by Elspeth Davie, winner of the Katherine Mansfield Prize. These new stories have cunning, charm, comedy and beauty. Perhaps the best is the title story, which is also the longest and describes the moods and attitudes of a group of passengers on a coach journey from Perth to Adelaide along a route that is one of the longest and loneliest stretches of the Australian continent. The claustrophobic atmosphere and the sudden death of the driver shrivel the nerve ends.