Margaret Murphy is a weaver of fantastic tales, growing up in a world where the truth is too much for one little girl to endure. Her first memory is of the day her friend Agnes died.
No one blames Margaret. Not in so many words. Her mother insists to everyone who will listen that her daughter never even left the house that day. Left alone to make sense of tragedy, Margaret wills herself to forget these unbearable memories, replacing them with imagined stories full of faith and magic—that always end happily.
Enter Poor Deer: a strange and formidable creature who winds her way uninvited into Margaret’s made-up tales. Poor Deer will not rest until Margaret faces the truth about her past and atones for her role in Agnes’s death.
Heartrending, hopeful, and boldly imagined, Poor Deerexplores the journey toward understanding the children we once were and the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of life’s most difficult moments.
Poor Deer is a haunting dark fable-esque story of childhood trauma, shame, grief, and redemption. The story follows Margaret Murphy in a dual timeline narrative as a young child at the time of the tragic death of her best friend and as an adolescent haunted by a dark creature named Poor Deer, the ugly manifestation of her unresolved trauma and shame. Poor Deer becomes the most present aspect in her life, eerily presenting itself on her shoulder or the dark corner of a room while taunting her. To better deal with her grief and reality, Margaret writes false stories and confessions of her life with happy endings, while Poor Deer lashes back, scolding her for not telling the truth. As a neglected and misunderstood child, her only other sanctuary comes from her encounters with an old man in the woods who teaches her to train messenger pigeons.
The story is beautifully written and ingeniously structured, with chapters alternating between present-day adolescent Margaret attempting to confess and of childhood Margaret facing precarious circumstances. The writing has the feel of an adult novel but is written from a child’s voice. Another unique aspect of the book is that it switches between first-person and third-person perspectives—one perspective told from present-day Margaret and the recounting of Margaret’s childhood.
The story has a relatively small number of characters, most of whom are unlikeable and unforgettable. Florence, Margaret’s mother, begins as a somewhat compassionate mother who publicly denies Margaret’s guilt. But she shows little patience or empathy towards her daughter’s unusual behaviour and quickly grows to detest and neglect Margaret as the years pass. Florence’s sister, Dolly, becomes the only supportive figure in Margaret’s upbringing, and the bond between them is quite heartwarming. After overhearing conversations of the two women arguing over her oddities and potential guilt, Margaret goes further inwards and further represses her trauma and grief. The story brilliantly displays how emotionally ill-equipped a child is in dealing with tragedy, neglect, and alienation, along with the complexities of parent-child relationships.
In summary, this is an entirely immersive story of unresolved childhood trauma, shame, neglect, and the difficult path to healing and redemption. The prose is metaphorical and haunting, making for a highly original and compelling story that is difficult to put down. Narrator Sophie Amoss perfectly captures the spirit of the story with a powerful and mesmerizing tone that keeps listeners fully entranced in every scene. If you enjoy thought-provoking and highly original stories with dream-like feels and unforgettable characters, you should highly consider reading this book. It’s one you won’t easily be able to compare to others and one you won’t soon forget!
