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What Am I, a Deer? by Polly Barton review
The feverish interiority of a young woman abroad is captured with offbeat wit and disarming candour in the first novel from the translator of Butter
TL;DR
- The novel opens with an epigraph from Mis-Teeq, hinting at themes of desire and pop music's cathartic power.
- Polly Barton, primarily a translator of Japanese fiction, makes her fiction debut with "What Am I, a Deer?".
- The unnamed narrator relocates to Frankfurt seeking self-reinvention but becomes consumed by an "umbrella man" she briefly encountered.
- The narrative is driven by the narrator's intense inner monologue and her addiction to infatuation, which serves as an escape from living.
- Karaoke provides a form of salvation, allowing the narrator to reconnect with a more uninhibited version of herself.
- The novel is noted for its offbeat wit, disarming candor, and observations on millennial ennui, drawing comparisons to works by Vincenzo Latronico and Sally Rooney.
- While touching on themes like heteropessimism and gender, these reflections sometimes feel tangential to the central obsession.
- The title references Isabella Rossellini's web series, capturing the novel's mood of reluctant participation in the theatre of desire.
- Despite minimal plot, the novel is praised for its honest portrayal of yearning and the modern condition of feeling on the verge of life.