Only the Animals - Softcover

Ceridwen Dovey's debut novel, Blood Kin, was published in fifteen countries, shortlisted for the Dylan Thomas Prize, and selected for the U.S. National Book Foundation's prestigious "5 Under 35" honours list. She studied social anthropology at Harvard and New York University, and now lives with her husband and son in Sydney. Only the Animals won the 2014 Readings New Australian Writing Award. Her website is www.ceridwendovey.com

I have been waiting, since Blood Kin, for another work of fiction by Ceridwen Dovey. Only the Animals is filled with knowledge and wisdom and beauty. It leaves a strange and striking trace on its reader. * Rachel Kushner, author of The Flamethrowers * I remember being told once that there are bioluminescent plankton; these stories remind me of that fantastic, startling and real illumination. The animal narrators are not mythic, or naive--they are psychologically full. 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 * We challenge you not to get caught up. * Elle * A strange and beautiful work . . . Each story is self-contained, but each is far richer - in terms of emotional and philosophical resonance - for its proximity to the others. To put it another way: Only the Animals is a perfectly integrated work of art brilliantly disguised as a collection of short stories. * The Monthly * Dovey is a natural storyteller . . . The author's portrayals of human-animal interactions evoke images of lasting beauty and power. * Australian Book Review * Dovey writes with the same easy, muscular lucidity in this book as in her first; and both place her as part of a transnational generation of younger authors...whose work stakes a claim, via flamboyant feats of novelistic imagination, for extending fiction's borders past their own geography and time. * Sydney Review of Books * An audacious work of the imagination . . . An extraordinary series of fabulist tales . . . The yarns are funny, tragic, smart, arch, poignant and playful all at once. * Saturday Age * Frequently hilarious... Dazzling. * The Observer *