There’s a dreamy moment halfway through Geoffroy Delorme’s brief, sensuous book in which one of the young deer he gets to know curls up beside him, its head resting on his leg. The image is both touchingly familiar and surreal. A couple of walkers nod in greeting as they pass, as if it’s customary for a wild deer to snooze in the lap of a human. No doubt, Delorme notes, they mistake the deer for a dog. Even more startling, the little deer, whom Delorme names Daguet, begins to twitch and wriggle. “He is clearly dreaming,” Delorme writes. Of what, one wonders, do roe deer dream?
Deer Man follows the story of someone who turns his back on society and spends seven years living in a forest among roe deer. We discover very little about the events that preceded this decision. Exclusively home-schooled, the young man was clearly lonely. And there’s something amiss in his relationship with his family. Yet a fleeting encounter with a young buck draws him into the woods around Louviers, France, and off he goes. It’s fairytale stuff, both in its transformational force and its unspoken darkness. The lack of information about his life – the ruthless absence of autobiography – can seem odd to a modern reader. Yet the strength of this book is its singular focus on the deer.
