What Am I, A Deer? by Polly Barton
| What Am I, A Deer? by Polly Barton | |
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| Category: Literary Fiction | |
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Reviewer: Heather Magee
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| Summary: Polly Barton's debut is a witty, self-aware novel that tackles obsession, ambition, and cultural critique with such ease it never feels heavy. | |
| Buy? Yes | Borrow? Yes |
| Pages: 336 | Date: April 2026 |
| Publisher: Fitzcarraldo Editions | |
| External links: Author's website | |
| ISBN: 9781804272176 | |
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Polly Barton's debut novel is an intellectually playful yet emotionally exposed work that uses translation as both subject and governing metaphor. The narrator, newly relocated from London to Berlin, works translating video games into Japanese through the process of localisation, rewriting language until it feels comfortably familiar to a new audience. Barton treats this as a paradoxical act: arguably, in striving for universality, language is endlessly repackaged, its originality at risk of disappearing altogether. From this, the novel opens out into a wider, resonant question: to what extent do we translate ourselves in order to be understood, accepted, or loved?
Translation becomes shorthand for the quiet, often unconscious ways we make ourselves digestible to others, altering who we are for new cities, new social groups, new lovers. Barton extends this idea to gaming and karaoke, all described as expressions of what she calls the unquenchable desire to become someone else. Yet this impulse sits uneasily alongside the narrator's professed abhorrence of deception, creating a productive tension between self-invention and authenticity.
The novel is deeply concerned with what it means to be yourself not as a hollow aphorism but as something bound up with sexual identity, niche interests, and the desire to lean fully into one's own geekiness. Barton captures the relief of self-recognition beautifully, while never ignoring the parallel need to be seen and affirmed by others. Acceptance, here, is never separate from recognition.
At the heart of the book is a consuming crush, sparked when a stranger returns the narrator's forgotten umbrella on a train. This fixation becomes the novel's engine, colouring her days and fuelling an elaborate confirmation bias that he, too, has noticed her. The crush recalls Annie Ernaux's The Possession in its intensity and self-awareness, and Barton renders its suffocating, exhilarating weight with striking precision. Even while in a relationship, the narrator confesses her devotion to this unknown man, exposing both the embarrassment and vulnerability that come with caring too much, and a loud refusal to adhere to what the present cultural context would call the nonchalance epidemic, wherein emotional detachment is mistaken for strength.
The novel's form is interesting. Chapterless, it is punctuated by song lyrics or album titles in all caps, all nods to the karaoke theme humming quietly throughout. As I like to do with books that reference music, I tracked down each song mentioned in the text and created a playlist following the order in which the lyrics appear in the book (there are some great tracks in there). Initially, I worried that the formal experimentation of lyrics interrupting prose would become jarring but these sections added rhythm rather than distraction, acting as lyrical markers in a fluid, propulsive text. Overall, this is a novel about yearning, recognition, and the risks of devotion, rendered with rare clarity and emotional intelligence.
I would like to thank the publisher for sending a copy of this book to The Bookbag. By way of recommendation, another fantastic work of literary fiction which reflects on identity is One Boat by Jonathan Buckley.
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You can read more book reviews or buy What Am I, A Deer? by Polly Barton at Amazon.co.uk Amazon currently charges £2.99 for standard delivery for orders under £20, over which delivery is free. (Paid link)
You can read more book reviews or buy What Am I, A Deer? by Polly Barton at Amazon.com. (Paid link)
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