What Am I, a Deer? by Polly Barton review – shyness, obsession and the joy of karaoke

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 Without meaning any disrespect to the now defunct noughties R&B trio Mis-Teeq, one would be hard pressed to think of many novels that open with an epigraph from their oeuvre. “You know you wanna sing with us (baby). That’s why you know you should be scared of us (baby),” from their 2003 single Scandalous, greets readers of Polly Barton’s debut no...

By Emma Loffhagen