The narrator, at first male, explains various events from his early childhood, living with a traveling family who finally settle in Ottawa, Ontario.

He goes on to explain events from his years in private school (including his parents' death), until he graduates and travels to Portugal, where he, on his eighteenth birthday, wakes up as a female.

"[2] Some reviewers noted an autobiographical strand in the book,[3] whose hero is, like Martel, the child of Canadian diplomats and a writer achieving recognition at a young age.

[8] A reviewer for the Sydney Morning Herald, noting that Martel himself had called the novel "terrible" and expressed a wish that it "disappear", agreed that the work suffered from a "serious crisis of identity", and lacked the power of Life of Pi.

[8] The Montreal Mirror went further, calling Self "lame... A pastiche of autobiography and post-modern plot twists, it was haunted by an off-putting tone of smug precociousness.