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A Novel & Stories
by Torrey Peters
Book Reviewed by:The kaleidoscopic follow-up to the bestselling Detransition, Baby.
In this collection of one novel and three novellas, Torrey Peters's keen eye for the rough edges of community and desire push the limits of trans writing.
In Stag Dance, the titular novel, a group of restless lumberjacks working in an illegal winter logging outfit plan a dance that some of them will volunteer to attend as women. When the broadest, strongest, plainest of the axmen announces his intention to dance as a woman, he finds himself caught in a strange rivalry with a pretty young jack, provoking a cascade of obsession, jealousy, and betrayal that will culminate on the big night in an astonishing vision of gender and transition.
Three startling novellas surround Stag Dance: "Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones" imagines a gender apocalypse brought about by an unstable ex-girlfriend. In "The Chaser," a secret romance between roommates at a Quaker boarding school brings out intrigue and cruelty. In the last novella, "The Masker," a party weekend on the Las Vegas strip turns dark when a young crossdresser must choose between two guides: a handsome mystery man who objectifies her in thrilling ways, or a cynical veteran trans woman offering unglamorous sisterhood.
Acidly funny and breathtaking in its scope, with the inventive audacity of George Saunders or Jennifer Egan, Stag Dance provokes, unsettles, and delights.
Tipton, Iowa, seven years after contagion
I'm lugging a bucket of grain for the sows, using two hands to keep the weight of it, hung from that thin wire, from biting into my somehow never-callousing fingers, when Keith comes up behind me and hoists it away from me with one hand. He holds it up, still with one hand, and tsks at me. "Looks like you need some help there, little lady."
He's got the macho bravado of all the T-slabs, complete with the aggression and rages—plus he's six foot five if he's an inch. Our relative heights place my line of vision at his chest, so I'm able to observe from up close how he wears a pair of old Carhartt coveralls unbuttoned down the front to show off his hairy bitch tits. He's so proud of them that even out here in the country he shows them off, a bit of conspicuous consumption that even the most isolated farmers can read: I'm so flush with testosterone that I overinject. How about that, you low-count ration-dependent weaklings? I'm grateful he ...
The book as a whole consists of this central story, referred to as a novel, and three shorter stories. All introduce aspects of fluidity to gender, exposing the constructions beneath it. The strange, antiquated vocabulary of the novel and the use of first-person voices (and resultant lack of gendered pronouns) throughout the book merge to create a landscape in which gender is doubted more than established. Summing up the stories in simple terms feels imperfect and impossible — Who are these people? What are their pronouns? How would they want to be spoken about, or would they (as seems more likely) rather not be spoken of at all? — because Peters' characters are drawn in a way that calls attention to the limitations of language, the elusive nature of identity, and the constructs that demand we choose one. The characters' failures to either keep up with this demand or escape it form a pervasive pathos that gives gravity to the funny and absurd premises of the stories; how these qualities are balanced against each other varies...continued
Full Review
(1090 words)
(Reviewed by Elisabeth Cook).
Brit Bennett, New York Times bestselling author of The Vanishing Half
A spellbinding collection of genre-blurring novellas, set in worlds familiar and far-flung... . With pathos and wit, Torrey Peters explores characters who find themselves on the brink of self-discovery while also grappling with the challenge and promise of community. I loved this book.
The titular "novel" from Torrey Peters' book Stag Dance takes place in an illegal logging camp in early 1900s Montana. During a cold and lonely winter, the lumberjacks there hold a dance, with some men designating themselves as women by placing a triangle of fabric between their legs, showing that they wish to be courted by the others. Much of Peters' elaborate tall tale-esque story of fluid gender identity is obviously just that: an inventive fiction that flirts with the supernatural and incorporates elements of early American mythology. But the fabric triangle and the dance are taken from real history, and their existence highlights how much of queer and trans history has been erased from our general knowledge of the American Old West.
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