Only the Animals: Stories - Softcover

"Filled with knowledge and wisdom and beauty...it leaves a strange and striking trace on its reader."--Rachel Kushner

"These stories are strange and richly imagined, well researched and at times haunting and atmospheric....Dovey is a gifted prose stylist....This collection unflinchingly illuminates human nature, and makes clear that the rest of the natural world can only bear witness."--Megan Mayhew Bergman, The New York Times Book Review

"Inventive...Dovey has daringly shrugged off the constraints of conventional fiction. These stories are alternately funny and distressing....In Only the Animals, Dovey has tried something audacious. Aiming to see the world anew, she's crafted an unusual and beguiling ode to the feathered, the four-legged, and the fearless creatures of the sea." --Kevin Canfield, Minneapolis Star-Tribune

"Dazzling."--Stephanie Cross, The Guardian

"Only the Animals doesn't simplify or sentimentalize, but it does suggest that there is something irreducibly powerful about our imaginative bonds with animals. As long as there are humans, there will be animals, and as long as there are animals, we will think and write and dream about them."--Anthony Domestico, The Boston Globe

"Dovey succeeds in providing original bittersweet tales with the hard-edged truths of history. An essential collection, enthusiastically recommended."--Donna Bettencourt, Library Journal (starred review)

"By appropriating history, mythology, folklore, and even astrology, Dovey finds impressive depth and complexity in the souls of an array of animals....Dovey finds humanity in her diverse protagonists, and the stories are full of surprises, warmth, and insight."--Publishers Weekly

"A beautifully wrought, disconcerting collection."--Nell Porter Brown, Harvard Magazine

"And though the humans in these stories often act like beasts, having actual beasts tell the stories give the reader a broadened sense of what we affectionately term 'humanity.' "--Rivka Galchen, author of Atmospheric Disturbances

"The life stories related by these very civilized animals are in some cases touching (the elephant), in others amusing (the mussel), but all are absorbing. They are transmitted to us with a light touch and no trace of sentimentality."--J. M. Coetzee