STAG DANCE
A Novel & Stories
by Torrey Peters
Three long stories and a short novel by the author of Detransition, Baby (2021).
In her debut, Peters told the story of a trans woman and her ex-lover—formerly a trans woman, now living again as a man—building a family together with the latter’s new partner, a cisgender woman. Tender and funny, the novel was a critical and commercial success. This follow-up volume is a lopsided collection that the author wrote over the course of 10 years. The opening piece, “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones,” is set in a hellish future in which a pandemic renders humans incapable of producing sex hormones. It’s also sort of an antiromance centered around two trans women who are inextricably connected, despite what the narrator might wish. In “The Chaser,” a boy who’s reluctant to acknowledge his own sexuality embarks on a secret relationship with his boarding school roommate, the results of which are disastrous for both of them. “The Masker” is a darkly intense interrogation of identity and desire centered on a “sissy” boy who is trying to figure out if they are a cross-dresser or a trans woman while being pulled in different directions by a charismatic fetishist and an overbearing trans elder. Babe, the protagonist of the longest piece, Stag Dance, fells trees for an outlaw logging operation. Remarkably large and prodigiously ugly, he discovers a self he hadn’t recognized before when the camp boss declares that there will be a stag dance—a rustic soiree at which some loggers volunteer to be women. Babe is a terrific character, and his relationship with the prettiest boy in the camp is nuanced and affecting. This could be a crackerjack short story, but it feels interminable at novel length. It’s repetitive, and the old-timey jargon loses its charm pretty quickly. Peters might think about trimming this down to a taut tall tale and venturing deeper into the world she’s created in “Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones.”
Even when Peters’ experiments don’t pay off, it’s exciting to read an author willing to take these risks.