Only The Animals sounds like it could be every sentimental animal lovers’ delight: the souls of 10 animals caught up in human atrocities tell their stories. Thankfully Dovey’s debut collection of short stories is not the least bit cute. It is ambitious, amusing, experimental, and provides a surreal introduction to some major writers of the 20th century. Plautus: A Memoir Of My Years On Earth And Last Days In Space, for instance, follows a Russian tortoise who makes a break for Tolstoy’s residence but becomes a friend of the writer’s youngest daughter, Countess Alexandria. He gets smuggled to Virginia Woolf, plods along with George Orwell, and finally is rocketed into space by the Soviets. Dovey’s style is playful and parodic, slipping in lines from authors or brilliantly aping authorial voices. One of her best stories concerns a beatnik mussel called ‘Sel’ – a Jack Kerouac of the sea – who strikes out for San Francisco in search of the "American root of it all".
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