The book that broke my heart…
The number of tears I shed would lead an observer to think I was slightly crackers; there are people who can say, “it is only a book”. I was not prepared for how emotionally affected I was by what I was reading.
The Publishers Note states in part: “In a trench at the Western Front a cat recalls her owner Colette’s theatrical antics in Paris. In Nazi Germany, Himmler’s dog seeks enlightenment. A Russian tortoise once owned by the Tolstoys’ drifts in space during the Cold War. In the siege of Sarajevo, a bear starving to death tells a fairytale; and a dolphin sent to Iraq by the US Navy writes a letter to Sylvia Plath.”
The stories in this collection are told in the first person, by the souls of ten animals who lost their lives due to human conflicts! The animals are wonderful story tellers; their observations of us humans at our best and worst are entertaining, frequently humourous, sometimes playful and always poignant. The tale of the elephant tells us that animal souls become stars, hence at we are treated to some new star signs and little mud maps of hour they fit into the night skies.
Each chapter starts with quotes from a famous author or authors because, quoting from Ceridwen’s home page “Each of the animals also pays homage to a human writer who has written imaginatively about animals during much the same time span, from Henry Lawson to Ted Hughes, from Kafka to J.M. Coetzee, from Colette to Virginia Woolf, from Tolstoy to José Saramago, from Günter Grass to Jack Kerouac, from Tom Stoppard to Julian Barnes. As the soul of the tortoise explains, borrowing the words of the poet Czeslaw Milosz, ‘So little of the total suffering, human or animal, can ever make its way into literature in the end. When it does, we should pay attention, and pay our respects.”
From my opening statement you might think this book is depressing, but it is not! What broke my heart was man’s inhumanity not only to his own kind, but the animal-kind as well. Considering what we ask of animals, they are more understanding of us than we deserve. Dovey writes with empathy for both humans and animals in a book which will appeal to anyone who loves animals. Many of us belong to book clubs – I highly recommend this novel, it would provoke much discussion.
Thank you to Penguin Books Australia via NetGalley for my pre-publication copy of Only the Animals.
Available via Booktopia for $23.95
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About the Author
Ceridwen Dovey was born in Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, and went to high school in Sydney. She did her undergraduate study at Harvard, and spent a year as research assistant for the current affairs program NOW with Bill Moyers. She wrote her novel Blood Kin as her thesis for a Masters in Creative Writing at the University of Cape Town, and has a PhD in anthropology from New York University. She now lives in Sydney.
Only the Animals is mesmerizing and exhilarating, funny and moving. It has elements of strangeness and greatness, like Kafka. Dovey’s exquisitely drawn creatures grapple nobly with their animal natures, a genius point of view from which to illuminate how we humans – ostensibly conscious and verbal – are trapped in ours. This book feels like a major mind announcing itself.’ Anna Funder
‘Dovey has surely created with Only the Animals one of the boldest Australian short story collections in recent years. A book that may wear its literary antecedents (Kafka, Collette, Woolf, Coetzee) lightly, but actually belongs in that sort of company.’ Martin Shaw
‘Dovey’s second (book) after the acclaimed 2007 novel Blood Kin, confirms her as a singular talent.’ Stephen Romei, The Weekend Australian
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