SOURCE: Fitton, Toby. “Accomplices to Nothing.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4281 (19 April 1985): 434.

In the following review of A Traveller's Room, Fitton asserts that most of the stories in the volume are excellent, if judged individually, but that, as a group, they lack variety.

A Traveller's Room is Elspeth Davie's fourth collection of short stories, gathering together work published mainly in 1982-4. There is an impression of concentration on similar themes, and a similarity of conception and manner, that detract from the overall effect, even when most of the stories, taken individually, are excellent. Just as encountering one or two works by a minor master in a provincial gallery can be a refreshing experience although a whole gallery of the artist's work is much less rewarding, so the delicate incisiveness of Davie's refined technique seems somehow less impressive when its results are multiplied and gathered in this way. Pace is...