SOURCE: King, Francis. “Laughter and Tears.” Spectator 282, no. 8903 (27 March 1999): 36.

In the following mixed review, King notes the humor and poignancy of the tales collected in The World's Smallest Unicorn.

As one of the most gifted contenders in the literary Olympic games, Shena Mackay has always struck me as being a sparkish, spunky sprinter rather than a patient, persistent long-distance runner. Her novels may at first seem slight, sometimes even insubstantial; but their specific gravity is so high that long after one has read them they still leave a dense residue in one's mind. Even her shortest short stories can, like those of Jane Gardam, be usually relied on to tell one far more about the turbulent passions and twisted motives of her characters than many a jumbo of a novel by a writer less concise and adroit.

In this latest collection [The World's Smallest Unicorn], many of these...