SOURCE: Croft, Barbara. “Tangled Tales.” Women's Review of Books 18, no. 8 (May 2001): 21-2.

In the following review, Croft contends that the stories in The World's Smallest Unicorn are “unique, bittersweet stories, full of fun but far from light reading.”

The stories of Scottish author Shena Mackay [in The World's Smallest Unicorn] are a lot more cheerful, but she too has an eye for the bizarre: an old folks home for retired clowns, a world traveler who ingests historic monuments, an eccentric old man's catalogue of life's embarrassments, an aging theatrical couple who act out the subtle jealousies of the film A Star Is Born.

Mackay, who has written a number of novels, including The Orchard on Fire and, more recently, The Artist's Widow, draws deliciously eccentric characters—Uncle Bob in “The Index of Embarrassment,” for example, who believes “that soap and water destroy the skin's essential oils,” and Tusker...