Point of View

With the exception of "Telling Fairy Tales," all of Dovey's stories are told by animal narrators after their death. Some narrators acknowledge the fact that they are now dead (e.g., Sprout in "A Letter to Sylvia Plath" begins by saying, "I'd like to try to get the story of my death out," 203), while other narrators never explicitly acknowledge their own end (e.g., Plautus in "Plautus: A Memoir" ends her story saying, "Around the moon we went," giving no hints as to her death, 152). Generally, the narrators who are aware of their own death are more reliable than those who are not. Kiki from "Pigeons, A Pony, the Tomcat, and I" literally predicts her own death. It is no coincidence, then, that Kik is also extremely insightful about animal-human relationships, recognizing the limitations of her relationship with her own owner, Colette. Similarly, Sprout is...