SOURCE: Duchêne, Anne. “The Distant Sound of Breaking Glass.” Times Literary Supplement (14 February 1986): 163.

In the following review, Duchêne commends the combination of humor and sadness she finds in Redhill Rococo.

In Shena Mackay's new novel [Redhill Rococo], the fuddled vicar, finding himself at a wedding reception, toasts “the horse and groom”; the local librarian gives the over-seventies double fines for returning books late, as they should know better; the local paper reports “CO-OP RAIDED: NOTHING TAKEN”; a cookery book is called “Take aLeek”. … It all sounds rather like a script for The Two Ronnies; and yet, like all Shena Mackay's novels, it is also painfully sad.

For twenty years now (dust-jacket photographs suggest she began publishing around the age of fifteen), Mackay has written with exuberant glee and compassionate horror about people living in suburban sorriness and desolation, gasping for what Forster called “a breathing-hole for...