People are outsiders for all sorts of reasons: class, sexual orientation, political status, but for Polly Barton’s anonymous narrator in What Am I, A Deer? it’s a little more complicated. Outwardly successful, inwardly wondering whether she will always be an awkward square peg, always outside looking in, “Why don’t you just admit to yourself that all you ever really wanted was someone who’d look you in the eyes unafraid like they knew you and understood you?” The new job and relocation to Frankfurt a chance to reset and become, “…less picky, less highbrow, less literary, less of a killjoy”. The creeping, scary realisation that movement and starting anew isn’t the answer, the “mortgage of hope” becoming sub-prime in very short time. Then, what is the answer? A partner? A bit more mindful life-affirming karaoke? And the secret obsession with “umbrella man”, which is going to lead what exactly? And how do you rid yourself of an obsession that is deep rooted and won’t be spelled away, “It pissed her off to have become so utterly ridiculous. There were people in the world with real problems and she was fannying around doing this emotional rune-reading”. And how does this play out against the fraught Frankfurt love affair? And Radiohead’s Idioteque? Intrigued? You should be. Polly Barton’s novel a deep dive into the “emotional reality” of a twenty-something (admit it, we’ve all been there), and like her other books, Fifty Sounds and Porn: An Oral History, is compelling and endlessly quotable. The inevitable question, where on earth does this great writer go next? Where indeed?

Publ. by Fitzcarraldo Editions £14.99

Steven Long