[Mr. McPherson] is one of those rare writers who can tell a story, describe shadings of character, and make sociological observations with equal subtlety…. [One of the stories in "Elbow Room,"] "The Story of a Scar"—about a simple young woman whose prim college boyfriend stabs her in a fit of jealousy—touchingly explores some of the crosswinds that buffet young blacks in their sometimes desperate quest for respectability. A few stories (the title story among them) tell the reader a bit less than he wants to know about the characters' lives and a bit more than he wants to know about the ideological or artistic problems that confronted the narrator. For the most part, however, the characters speak eloquently for themselves.

"Fiction: 'Elbow Room'," in The New Yorker (© 1977 by The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.), Vol. LIII, No. 40, November 21, 1977, p. 230.