Deer

Hello Darlings, I'm Deer, and I’m very happy to be part of the KNONK collective (and host for our book club). I love to read, and you can find some of my book reviews below. I also made a zine a number of years ago, and you can read that here:

Defiant for Life

Recovering from sexual violence

A hopeful zine about living with trauma.

My posts (on this page):
Less
Calendar Girls
Bad Behaviour
Detransition, Baby!
This is Pleasure

Delightful. Less is a funny and poetic book about a Arthur Less, a minor American novelist who can’t face either being at the wedding of his ex boyfriend, or staying home for it, so he accepts all the invitations to conferences, teaching positions, interviews, travel writing opportunities and trips he normally refuses and sets off on a journey around the world.
What follows is a series of mishaps and indignities (not least of which is his fiftieth birthday) as well as unlikely hook-ups and encounters with friends and exes. We learn things about the nature of time, and memory, and love. The helpless resignation with which our hero Less meets his misfortune and the loving, yet mocking omniscient narrator give the book a sweet atmosphere, and keep it from being too nostalgic or sappy.
I enjoyed it a lot.

Recommended for:

1. romantics
2. gays
3. vicarious travel enthusiasts

Won Pulitzer Prize for Fiction 2018

Pleasant but silly film about middle aged women raising money for charity with a nude calendar. The jokes are mild, the drama is forced, and the whole thing would have been a yawn-fest except for Helen Mirren. I just love her.

I was strongly recommended this and after trying to read it I didn’t want to ask why.
If I’m going to read a book with this much sadomasochistic sex, I’d like it if anyone was actually enjoying themselves.

Recommended if you like:

1. Bad sex
2. Human misery
3. ???

One of my top reads of 2025. The story is about a complex family trying to form: a detransitioned trans woman gets his boss pregnant and is asking his ex (a transwoman) to join them and be the second mother to the baby.
Most of the book is actually the character’s back stories, how they got to be who they are and why this crazy premise actually makes a kind of sense, maybe. It’s very queer, it’s funny and sad and hopeful without sanding down the rough edges.
I don’t identify as trans but reading this felt like a window into trans female experiences that an educational text just couldn't ever offer. And I value it deeply for that.

Recommended if you like:

1. Queer drama
2. Trans rights

Ooh, #metoo fiction with some nuance and room for interpretation? In this timeline? My goodness.
This is a novella about a Bad Man that asks: but how bad? Where is the line and when did he cross it?
Reading other reviews I can see they are all over the place. From sympathy for the Bad Man character to full throw-away-the-key condemnation. I think it’s a good book, it’s well written and I feel like I’m better for having read it.

Recommended if you like:

1. Complexity and nuance
2. Short books