diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 81f5d42..076a58e 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -5,6 +5,9 @@ All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file. This change
 ### Added
 - Support for named union members in c-layout (thanks to @jjttjj)
 
+### Fixed
+- Bug where `static-variable` with composite types with pointer primitive type carriers (e.g. c-string) would fail to deserialize
+
 ## [1.0.486] - 2024-10-04
 ### Fixed
 - Bug where one too many indirections is used when serializing/deserializing pointer types
diff --git a/src/clj/coffi/ffi.clj b/src/clj/coffi/ffi.clj
index 6c174af..07c45da 100644
--- a/src/clj/coffi/ffi.clj
+++ b/src/clj/coffi/ffi.clj
@@ -630,7 +630,9 @@
 (deftype StaticVariable [seg type meta]
   IDeref
   (deref [_]
-    (mem/deserialize-from seg type))
+    (if (identical? ::mem/pointer (mem/primitive-type type))
+      (mem/deserialize* seg type)
+      (mem/deserialize-from seg type)))
 
   IObj
   (withMeta [_ meta-map]