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What Am I, a Deer?
What does it mean to lose yourself – and is that something you should be aiming for? A young woman with little interest in games takes up a job in Frankfurt at a famous gaming company, naively set on reinvention. On her morning commute, in the familiar clutches of tedium and self-loathing, she encounters a nice-eyed stranger who returns her forgotten umbrella and finds herself catapulted into a dizzying, year-long whirlwind of obsession – not just with this endlessly attractive spectre, but also with the feverish karaoke trips from which she draws the ultimate solace. With astonishing existential acuity, Polly Barton's formidable debut novel renders the paradoxes of modern life in all its complexity, in deliriously self-conscious prose that is at once propulsive, titillating and bitingly funny. Echoing with the sounds of Whitney Houston and The Cure, reaching for the sublime in dark, sweaty boxes, What Am I, a Deer? is an exhilarating exploration of authenticity, fantasy, romance and intoxication.
336 pages, Paperback
First published April 2, 2026
About the author
Polly Barton
29 books241 followersPolly Barton is a writer and Japanese translator based in Bristol. In 2019, she won the Fitzcarraldo Editions Essay Prize, and her debut book
Fifty Sounds
, a personal dictionary of the Japanese language, was published in the UK by Fitzcarraldo Editions in April 2021. In 2022,
Fifty Sounds
was shortlisted for the 2022 Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year.
Her translations have featured in Granta, Catapult, The White Review and Words Without Borders and her full length translations include Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki (Pushkin Press), Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda (Tilted Axis Press/Soft Skull), which was shortlisted for the Ray Bradbury Prize, and There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura (Bloomsbury).
Her new book, Porn: An Oral History , will be published by Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) in March 2023 and La Nave di Teseo (Italy).
Her translations have featured in Granta, Catapult, The White Review and Words Without Borders and her full length translations include Spring Garden by Tomoka Shibasaki (Pushkin Press), Where the Wild Ladies Are by Aoko Matsuda (Tilted Axis Press/Soft Skull), which was shortlisted for the Ray Bradbury Prize, and There’s No Such Thing as an Easy Job by Kikuko Tsumura (Bloomsbury).
Her new book, Porn: An Oral History , will be published by Fitzcarraldo Editions (UK) in March 2023 and La Nave di Teseo (Italy).
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 262 reviews
November 24, 2025
Best known for her literary translations and, recently, her non-fiction, this marks Polly Barton’s debut as a novelist. It’s an intense, exceptionally introspective piece centred on an unnamed narrator whose life history strongly resembles Barton’s own - suggesting a marked semi-autobiographical component. The narrator’s recounting her experiences a decade earlier when she was living and working in Germany. She’d moved there from London to act as a translator for Japanese versions of products produced by a Frankfurt-based games company. A move intended to kickstart a process of radical self-invention, a space in which she’d finally become the person she’d always longed to be, rather than the person she believed herself to be. Her sense was that the people around her were somehow balanced and whole but that she was fragmented, deeply self-conscious and conflicted. In Frankfurt, much of her spare time is spent obsessing about another worker in her building. A man who travels on the same tram to and from work. She calls him the “umbrella man” enigmatic, darkly handsome – his role as a focus for her fantasies and longings sometimes echoed aspects of Shakespeare’s famous Dark Lady. For the narrator, the umbrella man’s the epitome of everything she could possibly wish for, a stark contrast to the disappointingly-suffocating man she’s actually dating aka the “stylish man.”
The narrator’s state of what looks a lot like limerence is the catalyst for a series of musings and interrogations: the narrator’s likes and dislikes, her hopes, dreams and the constraints of her gender. She thinks about the romance narratives that have shaped her notion of what relationships should look like – from Austen novels to Disney movies. She seeks to explain the disconnect between how she’s living and her thoughts about how she should be living by drawing on Lauren Berlant’s cruel optimism the habitual ways of thinking that impede self-awareness and self-realisation. In London the narrator’s partner was another woman yet she finds herself unable to evade heteronormative expectations - even though they’re steeped in heteropessimism or heterofatalism. The narrator’s internal struggles, her ambivalence consume her. Her accounts of grappling with a kind of existential angst often reminded me of representations of anxiety and alienation associated with writers like Rilke and Dazai albeit without the more harrowing descents – it was striking to see this playing out from a woman’s perspective for a change.
It's a highly intertextual piece from its title taken from Isabella Rossellini’s quirky Seduce Me pieces to snippets of philosophy stemming from the narrator’s undergraduate years – which aligns with Barton’s own background and philosophical grounding. The text is broken up by indirect references to pop songs. These, in turn, connect to the narrator’s love of karaoke which, like translation, allows her to temporarily inhabit other states of mind, other ways of thinking without fully investing or committing. It’s during these performances that the narrator feels most free. Commercial pop, particularly love songs, also provide the narrator with readymade forms of expression for otherwise overwhelming, confusing emotions. They render emotional states communicable, easily summarized and pinned-down, something the narrator finds almost impossible to do.
There’s little to no plot, this is very much in the vein of a bildungsroman, and there’s no rounded-off conclusion, other than the narrator’s passing from one state of being to another more manageable one. It’s an accomplished piece, thoughtful and insightful, with a number of arresting episodes and passages. But it didn’t quite work for me. I liked the overall concept, but I didn’t find the execution that engaging, it felt flat, forced, even ponderous at times. The narrator herself is fairly relatable but not always, unfortunately, that stimulating to read about.
Thanks to Edelweiss and publisher Fitzcarraldo for an ARC
Rating: 2.5 rounded up
The narrator’s state of what looks a lot like limerence is the catalyst for a series of musings and interrogations: the narrator’s likes and dislikes, her hopes, dreams and the constraints of her gender. She thinks about the romance narratives that have shaped her notion of what relationships should look like – from Austen novels to Disney movies. She seeks to explain the disconnect between how she’s living and her thoughts about how she should be living by drawing on Lauren Berlant’s cruel optimism the habitual ways of thinking that impede self-awareness and self-realisation. In London the narrator’s partner was another woman yet she finds herself unable to evade heteronormative expectations - even though they’re steeped in heteropessimism or heterofatalism. The narrator’s internal struggles, her ambivalence consume her. Her accounts of grappling with a kind of existential angst often reminded me of representations of anxiety and alienation associated with writers like Rilke and Dazai albeit without the more harrowing descents – it was striking to see this playing out from a woman’s perspective for a change.
It's a highly intertextual piece from its title taken from Isabella Rossellini’s quirky Seduce Me pieces to snippets of philosophy stemming from the narrator’s undergraduate years – which aligns with Barton’s own background and philosophical grounding. The text is broken up by indirect references to pop songs. These, in turn, connect to the narrator’s love of karaoke which, like translation, allows her to temporarily inhabit other states of mind, other ways of thinking without fully investing or committing. It’s during these performances that the narrator feels most free. Commercial pop, particularly love songs, also provide the narrator with readymade forms of expression for otherwise overwhelming, confusing emotions. They render emotional states communicable, easily summarized and pinned-down, something the narrator finds almost impossible to do.
There’s little to no plot, this is very much in the vein of a bildungsroman, and there’s no rounded-off conclusion, other than the narrator’s passing from one state of being to another more manageable one. It’s an accomplished piece, thoughtful and insightful, with a number of arresting episodes and passages. But it didn’t quite work for me. I liked the overall concept, but I didn’t find the execution that engaging, it felt flat, forced, even ponderous at times. The narrator herself is fairly relatable but not always, unfortunately, that stimulating to read about.
Thanks to Edelweiss and publisher Fitzcarraldo for an ARC
Rating: 2.5 rounded up
April 5, 2026
A brightly honest mediation on identity and learning what it is to belong (in its most general sense!!). With a painstakingly relatable character, this book kinda gave fleabag vibes with these sort of reflections on the myth of cool, whilst also exploring this idea of obsession in the scheme of adult crushes and relationships. This was honestly so refreshing and the prose was incredibly unique and well written. What a wonderful debut for my literary girlies 💌
May 18, 2026
This is an eccentric little book that took longer than expected to read (the stream-of-consciousness prose is best digested in small doses, I think) and was also packed with much more depth and introspection than the quirky premise conveyed. Yes, there are plenty of cringey and weird moments, but Barton also encapsulates so many nuances to being human that we seldom acknowledge. She chips away at the facade of being an 'outsider' only to reveal how universal alienation truly is. It's something special.
Limerence and sonder are the two main themes that our narrator's journey explores, and I grew quite attached to her. I think the ambitious scope (for a debut novel, anyway) both highlights Barton's strength as a writer and exposes some of her weaknesses. Some of the passages could use a bit of tightening up, as some sections feel unnecessarily bloated. I didn't necessarily hate the writing at any point, but the number of tangents the book takes you on can make tracing time and place a bit difficult. It's only when you finally return to a scene that you realize — oh right, this is where we were. The book starts abruptly and ends abruptly, so don't expect any meaningful bookends to her story.
Overall, I think Barton's writing is exceptional, and though virtually nothing about this story appealed to me at first glance (I remain ambivalent on karaoke, even upon finishing this), she still managed to get me excited to pick this up every time I had a spare moment. A real gem.
Illusions are said to be shattered, as though in one decisive moment, and certainly there are instants of dramatic smashing, a sudden burst of shimmering fragments, but she wonders if the more typical experience isn't a prolonged breaking. Or maybe: an illusion shatters in an instant, but a hope takes longer. A hope gives out in stages.
---
Independent bookstore day did terrible things to my wallet, but I got another Fitzcarraldo Edition, and I'm v excited about this one!!
Substack | Bookstagram | BookTok | BookTube | Bookshop.org Store | Libro.fm Bonus Offer
Limerence and sonder are the two main themes that our narrator's journey explores, and I grew quite attached to her. I think the ambitious scope (for a debut novel, anyway) both highlights Barton's strength as a writer and exposes some of her weaknesses. Some of the passages could use a bit of tightening up, as some sections feel unnecessarily bloated. I didn't necessarily hate the writing at any point, but the number of tangents the book takes you on can make tracing time and place a bit difficult. It's only when you finally return to a scene that you realize — oh right, this is where we were. The book starts abruptly and ends abruptly, so don't expect any meaningful bookends to her story.
Overall, I think Barton's writing is exceptional, and though virtually nothing about this story appealed to me at first glance (I remain ambivalent on karaoke, even upon finishing this), she still managed to get me excited to pick this up every time I had a spare moment. A real gem.
Illusions are said to be shattered, as though in one decisive moment, and certainly there are instants of dramatic smashing, a sudden burst of shimmering fragments, but she wonders if the more typical experience isn't a prolonged breaking. Or maybe: an illusion shatters in an instant, but a hope takes longer. A hope gives out in stages.
---
Independent bookstore day did terrible things to my wallet, but I got another Fitzcarraldo Edition, and I'm v excited about this one!!
Substack | Bookstagram | BookTok | BookTube | Bookshop.org Store | Libro.fm Bonus Offer
April 19, 2026
The kind of novel where you read twenty pages and you already know all its potential surprises have been, as far back as its earliest incarnation, sheered off at their inner edges to fit the preconceptions of a built-in audience that’s already read this book ten, twelve times under different titles, different authors. Its one breathless cadence very quickly creates a compression effect on the prose, its constant insistence of its own urgency flattens everything into an indistinct and bland goulash, a recipe for autofiction slop.
It has its moments, there’s many well formed turns of phrase and especially early on, moments I experienced recognition of certain feelings difficult to name effectively expressed, but it was never enough to invest in. Mostly it just felt overworked. As is often the case with this kind of writing it spends so much effort alchemizing moments of insight from its leaden bourgeois everydayness that it ignores fundamentals like rhythm, form, imagination, pacing, and like, writing a good sentence.
It has its moments, there’s many well formed turns of phrase and especially early on, moments I experienced recognition of certain feelings difficult to name effectively expressed, but it was never enough to invest in. Mostly it just felt overworked. As is often the case with this kind of writing it spends so much effort alchemizing moments of insight from its leaden bourgeois everydayness that it ignores fundamentals like rhythm, form, imagination, pacing, and like, writing a good sentence.
February 8, 2026
this book is for the vibes and the vibes only
February 18, 2026
guys they published my diary
April 24, 2026
Look at me reading about karaoke, crushes that are leaning towards obsession, translation, and reinvention. Oh, and heteropessimism, because why not.
From the very first page, I knew this was going to be special. You start a book with a cringe childhood memory and I’m in. This is the kind of book I want to devour, but I forced myself to pace it, just so I can hold onto the thrill of having it to return to. Barton created this slightly off-kilter, extremely close third-person stream of consciousness where each long sentence just has the perfect energy to carry you along. In another writer’s hands this would have been suffocating, but in Barton’s hands it somehow adds momentum.
What is this even about? A woman thinks back on the year she impulsively moved to Frankfurt (after impulsively moving to Japan) to work at a video game company as a Japanese-to-English localization translator. The glaring irony of her situation is that she is a professional translator living in a country where she doesn't actually speak the language. Isolated and slightly adrift, she becomes fixated on a stranger she dubs "the umbrella man." Every morning, she tries to perfectly time her commute to run into him again—a compulsive routine that feels exactly like a character respawning in a video game—hoping this run will be the one where they actually connect. It’s a jarring contrast to the actual relationship she ends up in with a man she detachedly refers to as merely "the stylish man." She almost plays the role of an NPC in her own relationship, which is a testament to how smart and darkly funny this book really is. Do I even have to mention how toxic this relationship turns?
I’m going to leave the heteropessimism as a tease! But if you love watching, or maybe relate to, someone whose reality is completely overshadowed by their fantasies and who constantly latches onto people and places, convinced they'll magically provide this elusive sense of fulfillment she can never actually grasp, then you will be completely obsessed with this book.
From the very first page, I knew this was going to be special. You start a book with a cringe childhood memory and I’m in. This is the kind of book I want to devour, but I forced myself to pace it, just so I can hold onto the thrill of having it to return to. Barton created this slightly off-kilter, extremely close third-person stream of consciousness where each long sentence just has the perfect energy to carry you along. In another writer’s hands this would have been suffocating, but in Barton’s hands it somehow adds momentum.
What is this even about? A woman thinks back on the year she impulsively moved to Frankfurt (after impulsively moving to Japan) to work at a video game company as a Japanese-to-English localization translator. The glaring irony of her situation is that she is a professional translator living in a country where she doesn't actually speak the language. Isolated and slightly adrift, she becomes fixated on a stranger she dubs "the umbrella man." Every morning, she tries to perfectly time her commute to run into him again—a compulsive routine that feels exactly like a character respawning in a video game—hoping this run will be the one where they actually connect. It’s a jarring contrast to the actual relationship she ends up in with a man she detachedly refers to as merely "the stylish man." She almost plays the role of an NPC in her own relationship, which is a testament to how smart and darkly funny this book really is. Do I even have to mention how toxic this relationship turns?
I’m going to leave the heteropessimism as a tease! But if you love watching, or maybe relate to, someone whose reality is completely overshadowed by their fantasies and who constantly latches onto people and places, convinced they'll magically provide this elusive sense of fulfillment she can never actually grasp, then you will be completely obsessed with this book.
May 19, 2026
This book continually put me in a bad mood and I'm still trying to figure out why. Stream of consciousness? A claustrophobic interiority? Mind-numbingly navel gazey? These are elements I typically love. It's the kind of book that I would have gobbled up and given 5 stars in 2023 and truthfully it's possible I would have felt differently had I read the physical copy. Though I think audio tends to work well for long, breathless sentences in narratives such as this, bringing to life the chaotic and often distracted torrent of a narrator's thoughts, in the case of this specific novel, it exhausted me. And perhaps exhaustion is the point, what other result can there be when you simulate a sense of urgency about mostly inane topics for 240 pages?
Of course, there were moments of connection, lines of thinking that pulled me in and made me think we were getting somewhere, words giving meaning to complex states of being; the bits about translation caught my attention, allowing me finally to grasp onto something of substance but the always eventual return to self-important ramblings on obsession and of all things, karaoke, lost me. I'm absolutely being a drama queen here but I can't remember the last time a book caused such visceral feelings of annoyance.
No plot, no vibes, just a bad time all around.
Of course, there were moments of connection, lines of thinking that pulled me in and made me think we were getting somewhere, words giving meaning to complex states of being; the bits about translation caught my attention, allowing me finally to grasp onto something of substance but the always eventual return to self-important ramblings on obsession and of all things, karaoke, lost me. I'm absolutely being a drama queen here but I can't remember the last time a book caused such visceral feelings of annoyance.
No plot, no vibes, just a bad time all around.
March 26, 2026
The first world problems of an insular narcissist are not enough material for a novel.
April 8, 2026
This is a cerebral, stream-of-consciousness novel following a woman trying to forge a sense of identity in the modern world. Its main theme is limerence, exploring the nature of an all-consuming, violent crush, which the narrator latches onto as her life starts to feel untethered. The narrator spends most of her time ruminating on every interaction she is part of and every thought that crosses her mind, finding it all humiliating. She is constantly striving to feel a sense of authenticity, even if it is a slippery, ever-changing concept.
I especially enjoyed the passages about the narrator’s work as a translator, and the ethical dilemmas / considerations one has to make when working on a translation. These insights were paralleled well with the narrator’s love of karaoke: two forms which allow us to inhabit other states of mind.
Despite some heavier themes, the book ends on a positive note, carrying the message that we should allow ourselves to lean into the things that bring us joy.
I especially enjoyed the passages about the narrator’s work as a translator, and the ethical dilemmas / considerations one has to make when working on a translation. These insights were paralleled well with the narrator’s love of karaoke: two forms which allow us to inhabit other states of mind.
Despite some heavier themes, the book ends on a positive note, carrying the message that we should allow ourselves to lean into the things that bring us joy.
April 18, 2026
What Am I, a Deer? is the debut novel from Polly Barton, published by Fitzcarraldo Editions. Barton was a winner of the 2019 Fitzcarraldo Editions/Mahler & LeWitt Studios Essay Prize for Fifty Sounds as well as a International Booker and National Book Award for Translated Literature longlistee as the translator of Hunchback.
The narrator of What Am I, a Deer?, which, as she explains in her account takes it's title from the Isabella Rossellini films, Seduce Me and Green Porno, is an aspiring literary translator, but, at the time the novel is set, working in Frankfurt for a Japanese video game company translating, or rather more specifically localising, the captions in games.
Her life there revolves around three pre-occupations - one with the art of translation itself; an obsessive crush on a co-worker, a limerent state of being; and with karoake, which she, and the novel, take very seriously.
Part herself has said in interviews that these three elements provide 'some kind of complex mediation going on between her and the outside world. They’re all sites where the desire for connection and the self come together in an almost tricksy way. All of them ostensibly a way of getting outside of herself, and offering release, and communion, but all of them in a way coming back again and again to herself.'
And the resulting novel makes for a deliberate mixture of hi- and l0-culture, a distinction the book does not recognise, an erudite romantic office comedy.
None of that was the cause of her discomfort, though, she understood, in time, it wasn't something interpersonal that irked her, but an issue with his theory of rhythm, a discomfort that felt just beyond her grasp. She tried at first probing his hypothesis for obvious counterarguments, as her mind tended to when it was trying on an idea for size, found herself thinking about people who actively enjoy arrhythmic music, and music that disrupts predictable rhythms in creative and interesting ways; remembered the thrill of first hearing the Garbage song 'Supervixen', the opening song from their debut self-titled album, where beats are regularly omitted from a thrashy, driven introduction, thinking initially that the CD was skipping and then learning to predict these omis-sions, while still admiring how they seemed to shake the whole song up. Yet the more she thought it through, the more it seemed that this kind of pleasure could still be framed as a derivative of rhythmicality, of expectation - whether you learned to anticipate that irregular beat, or precisely because you couldn't - and if anything it was an argument for, and not against, the man's theory.
Impressively different.
Interviews:
https://www.anothermag.com/design-liv...
https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-cul...
The narrator of What Am I, a Deer?, which, as she explains in her account takes it's title from the Isabella Rossellini films, Seduce Me and Green Porno, is an aspiring literary translator, but, at the time the novel is set, working in Frankfurt for a Japanese video game company translating, or rather more specifically localising, the captions in games.
Her life there revolves around three pre-occupations - one with the art of translation itself; an obsessive crush on a co-worker, a limerent state of being; and with karoake, which she, and the novel, take very seriously.
Part herself has said in interviews that these three elements provide 'some kind of complex mediation going on between her and the outside world. They’re all sites where the desire for connection and the self come together in an almost tricksy way. All of them ostensibly a way of getting outside of herself, and offering release, and communion, but all of them in a way coming back again and again to herself.'
And the resulting novel makes for a deliberate mixture of hi- and l0-culture, a distinction the book does not recognise, an erudite romantic office comedy.
None of that was the cause of her discomfort, though, she understood, in time, it wasn't something interpersonal that irked her, but an issue with his theory of rhythm, a discomfort that felt just beyond her grasp. She tried at first probing his hypothesis for obvious counterarguments, as her mind tended to when it was trying on an idea for size, found herself thinking about people who actively enjoy arrhythmic music, and music that disrupts predictable rhythms in creative and interesting ways; remembered the thrill of first hearing the Garbage song 'Supervixen', the opening song from their debut self-titled album, where beats are regularly omitted from a thrashy, driven introduction, thinking initially that the CD was skipping and then learning to predict these omis-sions, while still admiring how they seemed to shake the whole song up. Yet the more she thought it through, the more it seemed that this kind of pleasure could still be framed as a derivative of rhythmicality, of expectation - whether you learned to anticipate that irregular beat, or precisely because you couldn't - and if anything it was an argument for, and not against, the man's theory.
Impressively different.
Interviews:
https://www.anothermag.com/design-liv...
https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-cul...
April 29, 2026
this felt like the book a cool parisian girl would read at a cafe on a summer day with a cigarette and a glass of wine but alas i like sentences don’t continue on for an entire paragraph
April 11, 2026
These offset picks are not for me. I can’t follow this, I am not highbrow or intellectual enough. If you loved this book, I envy you. I would like to say I will not get any more of the offset, but I definitely will still buy them and read them and not like them because I hate to feel left out. I’m 0 for 2.
May 29, 2026
another book im glad i didn't look at the rating of before i started. though i totally understand why the rating is so low, i really enjoyed the book. it is an endless stream of consciousness, memory, and reflection but i just enjoyed it. it felt a little long towards the tail end and it began to lose me, but it was fun. i always admire the endless source of creativity these types of books have. i know it's loosely based off barton's life (I have no knowledge of this author aside from this) but still it felt wealthy of experience and introspection.
April 30, 2026
DNF @ 74%.
I had wanted to DNF at 38%, 49%, and then finally gave in at 74%. This is the kind of literary fiction that originally made me afraid to read litfic -- a genre which has now become a favourite, despite those initial fears.
Ultimately, it examines the difference between loneliness and being alone, and I wish I had left it alone.
I had wanted to DNF at 38%, 49%, and then finally gave in at 74%. This is the kind of literary fiction that originally made me afraid to read litfic -- a genre which has now become a favourite, despite those initial fears.
Ultimately, it examines the difference between loneliness and being alone, and I wish I had left it alone.
May 11, 2026
Reading this is exhausting, only the way being inside my own head is exhausting.
Barton is skilled at representing interiority on the page, particularly for an obsessive character who considers herself on the social periphery.
Barton is skilled at representing interiority on the page, particularly for an obsessive character who considers herself on the social periphery.
June 1, 2026
How did you become a monster to yourself in such a short space of time? You try to grasp the essence of the change and it slips away from you. You just know that at some point you came to feel a very different way about how you looked and your obsessions... which is to say that sometimes you look back and you wonder if actually everything that was waiting for you was already contained there...on the bare soles of your own grown feet.
March 2, 2026
It’s just, meh? Doesn’t hold my attention at all.
Want to Read
March 26, 2026I love the title
April 26, 2026
After a long slog to the end, I’ve finally finished!
This was probably a two-star experience, although there were a few strong passages (about crushes and the songs we associate with them, and how praying is essentially just journaling) that make me hesitant to be so harsh.
Ultimately the book was an unresolved whirlwind of observations without enough direction to make the rambling pleasant to read. I’m bummed because the title charmed me immediately. It had less of an impact when I discovered the line wasn’t original, but a reference to a short film by Isabella Rossellini.
This was probably a two-star experience, although there were a few strong passages (about crushes and the songs we associate with them, and how praying is essentially just journaling) that make me hesitant to be so harsh.
Ultimately the book was an unresolved whirlwind of observations without enough direction to make the rambling pleasant to read. I’m bummed because the title charmed me immediately. It had less of an impact when I discovered the line wasn’t original, but a reference to a short film by Isabella Rossellini.
June 4, 2026
This is for my fleabag lovers and lit fic girlies! I adored this, I really felt like the main character was inside my brain at times. Now I want to go and do karaoke !!
Read
July 1, 2026You are a girl, twelve years of age, still small enough to fit into your mother's gold satin nightie, still too far removed from puberty's comprehensive rewiring of reality to suspect that someday that might not be the case, still so perfectly and utterly flat-chested that the nightgown's plummeting neckline seems destined to be either a sad mockery of your figure or an inappropriate choice for a pre-pubescent girl, depending on your view, and yet neither of these, as it happens, turns out to be your view, which is likely bound up with how neither seems to be your mother's view either, when you slip it on she nods once, deeply, then laughs in approval, a reaction which seems to come down at least in part to the way that the pieces of satin are stitched together, which is to say, when you step over to the mirror you realize with a shock that the slight darting at the bust has made it look as though there is something more than just air down there - but no, it's not just that, it's as if the satin nightie has moved you into a world where you do have breasts, allowed you to believe that you really do have them, a magical sort of belief which is very closely related to the feeling that in fact anything is possible, any transformative feat of the imagination is possible, and it's on that basis that you decide that the garment will do for the occasion in question, namely, your transformation into Céline Dion. (13; first sentence)
*
Are they seducing me? What am I, a DEER? (106)
*
He could go fuck himself and his martyrdom and his stupid faux-naive drawings. They weren't even good, in fact they were really quite boring, all of that stuff about wanting to draw like a child was so tired, and if you were going to do it you had to bring to it something more than simply longing for mummy. As if he'd heard her thoughts, things fell eerily silent. All was quiet on every communicational front. Half of her felt, as before, that she couldn't believe her luck, while the other half very literally refused to believe that she had been so lucky. Time would vindicate this latter half. (144-5)
*
[…] she attempted to explain it to her on the phone, had said, in a moment of frankness, how she was fed up of being told how to think, how to feel, and her mother had responded by saying, don't you think that's a bit dra-matic, it doesn't sound like the worst fate to be regaled with notes and gifts, it sounds quite romantic, I imagine he's just trying to be nice, and she had snapped back, he's the one that's fucking dramatic, I don't want to live inside his stupid play any more. The moment she put the phone down she felt like a brat. She was a brat. She just wished that someone, anyone, could understand how it was that these things worked on you, slowly and over time, how the niceness transformed itself into something less nice, how romance could also throttle you. (194)
*
[…] starting again, but still here, and the thought was like glancing up at a sky filled with stars,
fathomless and full
IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD
AS WE KNOW IT
(AND I FEEL FINE)
(212)
*
They'd write that on her gravestone, she thought:
She might have been a great man, were it not that she craved closeness. (214)
*
You could enjoy karaoke through the joy of inhabiting specifically a certain song, voice, singer, but she felt that you couldn't truly love it without rejoicing in the collapsing of any fixed tie to any identity, to allowing yourself and being allowed to be everybody, karaoke was, in her thinking, the opposite of having a song, it was having every song, and no song, and basking in the promise of that. It was the biggest feeling. (219)
==============
with the long sentences (oh how I will always love those!), some definite—at least to me—neurodivergent looping in telling stories within stories, plus references to translations & more, I feel like this should be an automatic five stars & one of my “number one stunners” of the year… but it’s lacking something. I can’t pinpoint it exactly… maybe due to the long curving sentences not having enough “oomph” in the delivery?? space between each‽ idk.
some friends that I usually agree with on books have rated this quite low… I can’t really go below maybe four stars, myself… at least my first impression… but will say that I’m glad that I read it in print, as the audio would’ve definitely driven me a bit wacky like others have said!! so recommend print only for this book.
wouldn’t be surprised to see this on the booker longlist, but there’s such stellar works out there (& hoping even more that I don’t know yet!) that I wouldn’t want it to go further than that… but still thinking on it all.
*
Are they seducing me? What am I, a DEER? (106)
*
He could go fuck himself and his martyrdom and his stupid faux-naive drawings. They weren't even good, in fact they were really quite boring, all of that stuff about wanting to draw like a child was so tired, and if you were going to do it you had to bring to it something more than simply longing for mummy. As if he'd heard her thoughts, things fell eerily silent. All was quiet on every communicational front. Half of her felt, as before, that she couldn't believe her luck, while the other half very literally refused to believe that she had been so lucky. Time would vindicate this latter half. (144-5)
*
[…] she attempted to explain it to her on the phone, had said, in a moment of frankness, how she was fed up of being told how to think, how to feel, and her mother had responded by saying, don't you think that's a bit dra-matic, it doesn't sound like the worst fate to be regaled with notes and gifts, it sounds quite romantic, I imagine he's just trying to be nice, and she had snapped back, he's the one that's fucking dramatic, I don't want to live inside his stupid play any more. The moment she put the phone down she felt like a brat. She was a brat. She just wished that someone, anyone, could understand how it was that these things worked on you, slowly and over time, how the niceness transformed itself into something less nice, how romance could also throttle you. (194)
*
[…] starting again, but still here, and the thought was like glancing up at a sky filled with stars,
fathomless and full
IT'S THE END OF THE WORLD
AS WE KNOW IT
(AND I FEEL FINE)
(212)
*
They'd write that on her gravestone, she thought:
She might have been a great man, were it not that she craved closeness. (214)
*
You could enjoy karaoke through the joy of inhabiting specifically a certain song, voice, singer, but she felt that you couldn't truly love it without rejoicing in the collapsing of any fixed tie to any identity, to allowing yourself and being allowed to be everybody, karaoke was, in her thinking, the opposite of having a song, it was having every song, and no song, and basking in the promise of that. It was the biggest feeling. (219)
==============
with the long sentences (oh how I will always love those!), some definite—at least to me—neurodivergent looping in telling stories within stories, plus references to translations & more, I feel like this should be an automatic five stars & one of my “number one stunners” of the year… but it’s lacking something. I can’t pinpoint it exactly… maybe due to the long curving sentences not having enough “oomph” in the delivery?? space between each‽ idk.
some friends that I usually agree with on books have rated this quite low… I can’t really go below maybe four stars, myself… at least my first impression… but will say that I’m glad that I read it in print, as the audio would’ve definitely driven me a bit wacky like others have said!! so recommend print only for this book.
wouldn’t be surprised to see this on the booker longlist, but there’s such stellar works out there (& hoping even more that I don’t know yet!) that I wouldn’t want it to go further than that… but still thinking on it all.
June 27, 2026
4.5 ⭐️’s
I initially thought the third person was going to be rough, although a brave choice.
After sleeping on it, it's not just brave, it's brilliant!
Barton trusts consciousness itself AND trusts us to get it.
The novel is deeply interested in the distance between experience and interpretation and how that translates into living.
The movement of the narrator's mind is the momentum. Forget plot.
The protagonist isn't just experiencing her life, she experiences herself experiencing life.
So we are offered a layer of commentary happening inside her mind at all times, like a meta experience, except we are side by side with the narrator having the observation. It's brilliant.
That's why the third person feels so right.
It creates enough distance for consciousness to keep looking inward and expressing itself without floating away.
Which offers so much tension and is exactly what it is like walking around with high-functioning anxiety all day. The claustrophobia is real.
If the novel were written in first person, we'd receive her thoughts as original text.
Instead, because she's "she," we're always reading her, trying to find meaning in her translating herself.
The choice of "she" instead of "I" changes everything.
Perfect choice for a novel about a translator.
As a translator, her job is carrying meaning from one language into another, knowing that every translation leaves something behind.
As I got further along, I started wondering if that wasn't the novel's real subject.
We are always translating ourselves.
Hoping that somewhere between what we mean and what someone else hears, enough survives for us to feel known and seen.
I also loved the way Barton uses karaoke.
At first, I felt it was an eccentric detail.
But actually, it was the place where the protagonist could stop monitoring herself so closely.
The people willing to sing, laugh, and risk looking ridiculous became the people she trusted. The metaphor of finding the places where performance and authenticity become the same thing…that was the whole goal. Isn't that our goal too?
The more I think about this novel, the more inevitable and brilliant its form feels.
She watches herself as carefully as she watches everyone else.
Of course the story couldn't be told in the first person.
It had to be "she."
This books reminds me of Fosse. A book that fully trusts consciousness.
Those are the books I love!
I initially thought the third person was going to be rough, although a brave choice.
After sleeping on it, it's not just brave, it's brilliant!
Barton trusts consciousness itself AND trusts us to get it.
The novel is deeply interested in the distance between experience and interpretation and how that translates into living.
The movement of the narrator's mind is the momentum. Forget plot.
The protagonist isn't just experiencing her life, she experiences herself experiencing life.
So we are offered a layer of commentary happening inside her mind at all times, like a meta experience, except we are side by side with the narrator having the observation. It's brilliant.
That's why the third person feels so right.
It creates enough distance for consciousness to keep looking inward and expressing itself without floating away.
Which offers so much tension and is exactly what it is like walking around with high-functioning anxiety all day. The claustrophobia is real.
If the novel were written in first person, we'd receive her thoughts as original text.
Instead, because she's "she," we're always reading her, trying to find meaning in her translating herself.
The choice of "she" instead of "I" changes everything.
Perfect choice for a novel about a translator.
As a translator, her job is carrying meaning from one language into another, knowing that every translation leaves something behind.
As I got further along, I started wondering if that wasn't the novel's real subject.
We are always translating ourselves.
Hoping that somewhere between what we mean and what someone else hears, enough survives for us to feel known and seen.
I also loved the way Barton uses karaoke.
At first, I felt it was an eccentric detail.
But actually, it was the place where the protagonist could stop monitoring herself so closely.
The people willing to sing, laugh, and risk looking ridiculous became the people she trusted. The metaphor of finding the places where performance and authenticity become the same thing…that was the whole goal. Isn't that our goal too?
The more I think about this novel, the more inevitable and brilliant its form feels.
She watches herself as carefully as she watches everyone else.
Of course the story couldn't be told in the first person.
It had to be "she."
This books reminds me of Fosse. A book that fully trusts consciousness.
Those are the books I love!
June 29, 2026
I want to rate this book TEN stars, this was an utterly joy filled read and I wanted for it never to end and also never to put it down and also to finish it so that I could hold the whole thing in my head at one time and yeah just a lovely phenomenal time.
March 28, 2026
About a translator at a games company and her infatuation with a man and her love of Karaoke. Unpromising subject matter becomes a start point to a funny, articulate, psychologically astute inquiry into translation, textual and cultural, modern workplace social dynamics, systems of social valuation, relationships/friendships and being a bit mad but knowing that.
Pointedly contemporary and brilliant. You should read it.
Pointedly contemporary and brilliant. You should read it.
April 26, 2026
Could’ve been like fifty pages shorter. Was rather catfished in by the best opening citation ever and the first section. Liked the karaoke and linguistic concepts as it progressed but fuck me… 100 pages of longing for the biggest NPC
May 8, 2026
A repetitive (in a concentric way) but palatable reflection on solitude, escapism, and the idea of self-worth tied to social validation.
I vocalised "Girl, stand up!" more than once while reading this, and I think she does so by the end of the book, slowly but surely.
I vocalised "Girl, stand up!" more than once while reading this, and I think she does so by the end of the book, slowly but surely.
June 7, 2026
I LOVED this book. The style was so different than what I am used to (full tilt) and it felt like reading something that was part of me, came from me, kindred to me. I loved the journey. And that’s really the point, isn’t it.
May 9, 2026
Honestly fucking insufferable
May 12, 2026
I am not sure what happened here because for the first third, I was sure I would not finish this. Endless sentences jumping from here to there - stream of consciousness wears me out fast. But then some structure and narrative began to take shape. The narrator moves to Frankfurt to work as a translator at a video game company and becomes obsessed with one of his colleagues, but is also, like, semi-obsessed with karaoke.
From then on, it was a fun ride with some paragraphs so disarmingly honest that I was almost blushing reading them. This book was about many things, but I don't think I have read a better take on unrealistic infatuation and how our brain elevates someone only for it to come all crashing down when the subject of our fancy suddenly, just, well, talks to us. I absolutely loved this novel for that. How we love our perceptions so much that reality will never be enough to live up to them.
There was also a lot on translation, feeling alien in a different city, and general 30-something-female-lost-in-life malaise, and it felt like one feverish trip to the insides of someone's brain. Not for everyone, but I kinda warmed to it.
From then on, it was a fun ride with some paragraphs so disarmingly honest that I was almost blushing reading them. This book was about many things, but I don't think I have read a better take on unrealistic infatuation and how our brain elevates someone only for it to come all crashing down when the subject of our fancy suddenly, just, well, talks to us. I absolutely loved this novel for that. How we love our perceptions so much that reality will never be enough to live up to them.
There was also a lot on translation, feeling alien in a different city, and general 30-something-female-lost-in-life malaise, and it felt like one feverish trip to the insides of someone's brain. Not for everyone, but I kinda warmed to it.
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