One expects the fantasy-with-a-moral to be written by a mature sage like Voltaire, Samuel Johnson, or Anatole France…. Nevertheless, it will have to be admitted that Brigid Brophy not only writes with a great deal of delicate skill, but gets away very nicely with the air of mellow wisdom. "As old as the world" she would have us believe, and there are moments when the illusion is quite convincing. (p. 36)

Certainly there is a good deal of originality in ["Hackenfeller's Ape," the tale of] a scientist with emotional conflicts who was trying to understand animals, humanity, and possibly even God by observing the behavior of [an ape, the] creature whom he believed to be just at the beginning of that dubious development in the course of which esthetic and moral preferences, undefinable desires, and a sense of sin spoil the animal without … quite succeeding in turning him into anything which we have any real right to call satisfactory as a human being. (pp. 36-7)

Miss Brophy's tale is richly ornamented with witty turns, it is full of events, and by no means all of the surprises are to be anticipated….

But just what the main point is or, for that matter, whether a sharply defined main point is intended, is not sure. If a single lesson is implicit, perhaps it is kept a bit too completely in solution…. If Miss Brophy stands anywhere, it seems to be on the contention that this is a sorry world we never made and that it's not likely to better until we come a long way further from the apes than we are now. (p. 37)