Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello"[1] Writing in The Saturday Paper reviewer LS noted: "Two stories into Ceridwen Dovey's Only the Animals, my heart began to sink.

I thought that this collection of 10 thematically linked stories, told mainly by the souls of animals killed in human conflict who had close contact with or were inspired by a major writer, could hardly be more ungainly.

She wasn't expecting us to believe anything...Only the Animals makes much contemporary fiction seem stodgy and grey, and Dovey has put everything on the line here.

"[2] in The Australian Book Review Sam Cadman was also impressed with the collection: "The stories are assiduously researched – a list of sources is published on Dovey's website – and the historical and zoographic details are persuasive.

Dovey's ambition to address other animal-themed writings can make the style more self-conscious than is the case with her best writing...It may be that ultimately Dovey provokes empathy because her animal subjects are humanised: shape-shifting intermediaries who facilitate visualisation of how humanity might be perceived from some external, yet equivalent perspective...Whether you agree with Dovey's approach to humans and animals or not, no one interested in either will be sorry to have read this book.