this was very unique and very clever in many ways

as with a lot of short story collections i found some stories more gripping and accessible than other

the chaser was definitely the stand out for me

i enjoyed the exploration of gender and sexuality

it’s messy and complicated and holds space for our characters desires

thanks to netgalley for the advanced copy

Really loved Torrey Peters’ newest book, Stag Dance (thanks @serpentstail via @netgalley for the review copy). There is something so fresh and exciting about her writing and the way she plays with ideas of gender, treading into murky waters, which was evident in Detransition, Baby and runs through the three short stories and novella in Stag Dance. It was a surprise to learn that these stories were written over a period of ten years because some of her earliest writing - such as Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones and The Masker, which I newly, delightedly found out on the Between the Covers podcast were initially self-published as zines - is still so masterful. Writing in four different genres - dystopia (one I got so into that I gasped when I realised it was over!), romance (which had a very graphic depiction of animal abuse so trigger warning there, I still feel queasy thinking about it), horror (think The Silence of the Lambs) and historical fiction (lumberjacks?? I was into it) - Peters has fun with her characters as they deconstruct notions of gender in ways that are not always clear and coherent. So excited to see what Peters does next!

It's been over a day since I finished this book and I still don't know what to think, so this might be a little chaotic.

Stag Dance contains three short stories and one novella, all centred on topics of gender. There's no doubt that Torrey Peters knows how to write compelling characters; Her stories contain a lot of internal monologues and are character-driven.

The first short story - "Infect your friends and loved ones"-is my favourite - about a trans girl who starts a trans epidemic. The pov switches from her past to different years "after the contagion", creating a fascinating study of the trans women community.

The next one, "The Chaser", is told through a pov of a cis boy whose roommate (and lover) at school is a trans woman. Such words are never used here, but our narrator never treats Robbie as a man. Their story is full of shame but also love and understanding.

The third short story is finishing this book. "The Masker" is a quick study of fetishists and cross dressers. Quite interesting but could be longer.

And there's the novella "Stag Dance" and this is my main problem with this book. Part of the issue is the vocabulary. I had a hard time understanding the story because I didn't know some words (English is not my first language, but usually it's not a problem). The rest is really just having trouble connecting with the main character and understanding them. But I liked the idea and the ending.

Overall, I really enjoyed this book, and it's worth checking out. Also, I should finally read this author's previous book.

Unfortunately I just couldn't get into this one as much as I wanted to and had to DNF the book in the end. It was beautifully written but just not for me, which was such a pity as I really enjoyed Torrey's previous book.
Thank you to the publisher and NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC.

I love Torrey Peters and her first book, Detransition Baby was brilliant, lyrical and smart. It annouced Peters as a new literary force.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get into Stag Dance with the same enthusiasm and excitement. I found it too overly literary and just didn't vibe with the storytelling despite what could have been a really exciting plot.

Written well and I'm sure it will work for others.

Torrey Peters’ Stag Dance is a bold, intelligent, and deeply compelling novella that explores masculinity, transformation, and the tension between personal identity and societal expectations. Set against the backdrop of a secluded and exclusive hunting retreat, the story follows a group of wealthy men engaging in a ritualistic gathering—one that quickly reveals itself to be far more than just a hunting trip. As the narrative unfolds, Peters masterfully dissects the fragile performances of gender and power that these men enact, pushing her characters (and readers) into uncomfortable yet illuminating territory.

Peters’ writing is sharp and immersive, balancing biting social commentary with moments of vulnerability and dark humor. She has a gift for capturing the contradictions of human nature, exposing the way people grapple with change, desire, and the roles they’ve been assigned. The novella’s surreal and almost mythic atmosphere adds another layer of intrigue, making it feel both timeless and eerily contemporary.

While the story’s brevity makes for an impactful read, some of the themes and character arcs could have benefited from further development. There are moments when the story feels like it’s only scratching the surface of its deeper philosophical questions. Still, Stag Dance is a remarkable and thought-provoking work, showcasing Peters’ talent for challenging traditional narratives of gender and self-discovery.

This is a must-read for those who appreciate daring, subversive storytelling that lingers in the mind long after the final page.

From the title downwards, Detransition, Baby was a determinedly square peg of a book, but still one recognisably rooted in modern trans life, an insider's darkly comedic take on the messy reality behind the outraged or earnestly supportive, but in either case far simpler, messages that the world would rather apply with the broadest of brushes. Stag Party is not more of the same. Peters has said that one of her goals with this book is to undermine the cis-trans binary; these are all stories that fuck with gender, but in slightly different ways each time. Probably the closest it comes to a 'traditional' trans story is the last, The Masker, narrated by someone who identifies as a sissy fetishist, goes to a meet-up for trans women and crossdressers in Vegas, and without entirely wanting to, gets taken under the wing of an older trans woman adamant that this is just a first step on an inevitable life path to transition. Which is almost a parable: just as the straight world assumes there's one simple trajectory for everyone, so this representative of the trans world is equally one-size-fits-all for anyone who rejects traditional gender roles. Even better, she displays not the least trace of self-awareness while denouncing the eponymous Masker as a pervert and predator who should be driven out for the safety of all right-thinking people. But Peters isn't content to leave it there, applying a sly kick in the ribs whenever the reading starts feeling too settled, and building up to possibly the most satisfactory – and also most queasy – resolution in the book.

That carefully handled note of dissonance isn't deployed quite so well in the first two stories, each of which (spoiler, I guess?) spends the best part of 50 pages not only telling but showing us that a given character is awful, before at the end the narrator decides they're not so bad after all. This might well be deliberate, an emotional equivalent to China Mieville's love of deliberately anticlimactic endings – but I got fed up with it from him too. Certainly you could read it as a comment on trauma bonding, the sitcom character's inability to relinquish their tormentor, but equally, maybe it really is meant to feel redemptive. Either way, one of the pair, The Chaser, was already the story I liked least. Partly that's because a boarding school romance isn't as new a pitch as everything else here, even if you do relocate it to the Midwest. But also it's that the school has a farm attached, and there are some profoundly unpleasant agricultural scenes off the back of that.

Infect Your Friends And Loved Ones, on the other hand, is ingenious. I assumed its post-plague future must be a COVID response, but no, it was written five years pre-Event, and gives us an apocalypse that has left the entire human race dependent on artificial hormones – something that has, unsurprisingly, failed to usher in a post-gender utopia, instead leaving a whole new vicious hierarchy; within the first page we've seen "the macho bravado of all the T-slabs", "hairy bitch tits" proudly displayed as a sign of prosperity. "Antediluvian trans women", on the other hand, are regarded with more suspicion than ever, on the assumption that they were to blame for the catastrophe. Inconveniently, this turns out to be true; even more inconveniently, it was the narrator's terrible ex. The story jumps around the timeline, but wherever we are relative to the date of contagion, we're never far from a reminder that solidarity is a noble goal, some people within any demographic will inevitably be dreadful.

And then there's Stag Dance itself,by far the longest story, a short novel in its own right. Set in an illegal logging camp about a century back, it takes as its starting point the real historical detail that such camps would, like many all-male environments, adopt their own conventions whereby men who didn't necessarily think of themselves as anything but men who liked women could, in the absence of women, find an outlet for their urges. And then, because this is Peters and not some doggedly extruded piece of approved literary LGBTQIA writing, adds another twist, as 'Babe Bunyan', the biggest and toughest logger in the camp, decides that being courted as a woman sounds rather charming, actually. It's deeply researched, gripping, maddening, occasionally heartbreaking. But I did also wonder whether somewhere in the background might be a bet about working up a certain Monty Python sketch that's fallen out of favour in recent years to the point that it could be seriously reviewed as queer fiction.

(Netgalley ARC)

This was an enjoyable collection of stories exploring sexuality and stereotypes in a more nuanced way than I’ve ever read before. Each story in the collection was vastly different from the last whether it was exploring young people struggling to come to terms or toxic relationships, the story telling in each was fully engrossing.

My personal favourite in this collection was Infect Your Friends And Loved Ones. I’m not usually a big sci-fi/dystopian reader so I was surprised I enjoyed this one so much, but the differing timelines and the build up to the main event kept me on my toes. Also as someone who likes clear conclusions to stories I also surprising enjoyed the abrupt ending and piecing together the rest of what I’d read to have an “ohhhhh” moment. So basically on paper this short story wasn’t my thing but it turned out to be really my thing so maybe I just need to try new things more, or maybe Torrey Peters just writes a great story that everyone can enjoy!

This is a really unusual collection.

Two short stories, a novella and another short story.

Like everyone else I loved Detransition Baby so I was really excited for this collection.

My favourite was the second story which I absolutely loved. I would have read a whole book about the teenage couple in this story discovering themselves and each other at boarding school.

I also loved the last story about a trans convention in Vegas.

But I really struggled with the first story and I especially struggled with the novella in the middle. It was a challenging structure too having a novella in the middle as it felt too long to be a short story but too short to stand alone.

There’s a lot to like here and I can’t wait to see what Torrey Peters does next. I just want more like the two stories I loved.

3.5 stars

Stag Dance the book is formed of three longer-form short stories - The Masker, Infect Your Loved Ones, and The Chaser - and a long novella/short novel, the titular Stag Dance. The latter of these didn't do anything for me as a reader, but the three short stories were all equally gripping while being wildly different in style.

Infect Your Loved Ones was a piece of speculative/dystopian fiction which toyed with a fascinating premise - what if everyone, cis and trans alike, had to inject hormones to keep up their gender presentation? Meanwhile, my favourite of the three, The Chaser, felt completely different in genre and writing style. Set in a boarding school and dealing with burgeoning teenage sexuality and gender exploration, the writing and themes reminded me of Curtis Sittenfeld's Prep (another iconic boarding school story). Strangely, pigs are a central motif in both stories.

4 stars on the strength of the three short stories.

Each of the stories in this collection just clarified further for me the skill of Torrey Peters at her craft. The sheer breadth that was covered was quite astounding. Reading the acknowledgements, what an achievement to have this published. My favourite was the final story, but in each there was so much to think about and so much to unpick surrounding identity, the notion of community, concepts surrounding gender and sexuality, the notion of transition as an ongoing process, love, acceptance, fantasy and fetish. Each character was profoundly human, each concept was wholly thought out and executed perfectly. A deeply provoking and honest read.

The highly anticipated follow up to Detransition Baby, Stag Dance is a collection of (long) short stories written over a span of about ten years. Torey Peters is really interesting in her acknowledgements where she notes that she wrote these stories, which she maybe more accurately calls "pieces", "to puzzle out, through genre, the inconvenient aspects of my never-ending transition - otherwise known as ongoing trans life".

These pieces go from post apocalyptic speculative fiction that explores the possibility for community or for tension and conflict between trans communities, to a boarding school romance and that explores early, pre transition life and relationships, to a self described "horror" story about desire and fetish to the centrepiece and title story, which is more of a western.

Unfortunately, I just flat out didn't like the title story, Stag Dance, though when I heard it described I liked the idea - a really insular, hyper masculine world of lumberjacky-guys (do not know the terminology) and the latent desires and unarticulated, complex gender identities and sexualities that come to the fore when a stag dance is organized, whereby some of the men volunteer to play the part of the women for the event. It was so disappointing to me that I didn't enjoy this story, as it's really ambitious and interesting, but I almost gave up on the book several times while reading it, and I'd love to hear from readers who loved this piece to talk about it more.

I still do recommend the book based on the shorter stories, and I think this book is really interesting in what it tries to do, but I can't say I thoroughly enjoyed any of it in the way I really loved Detransition Baby - but perhaps I'm not looking for the same things in this book that other people may be.

Stag Dance is out 13 March

I read Detransition Baby some time ago and was interested to read the author's "new" book bringing some previously published works together. As is usually the case with short stories readers will prefer different ones and this is part of their success. Ms Peter's strength seems to lie in her ability to create fully rounded characters, and I felt this was demonstrated best in "the chaser" and "the masker" where emotions and actions were easier to empathise with. I didn't really understand "infect your friends and loved ones" and although I seemed to be told a lot about felling trees and the people who lived in the camps in "stag dance" the subject and characters didn't hold my interest.
Thank you to netgalley snd Serpent's Tail for an advance copy of this book.
3.5 rounded up to 4 stars

For me, this was a book of two halves. If I could I would award it 3.5 stars, but 3 seems too mean for the stories I enjoyed, so 4 seems most appropriate.

If I were putting this collection together, I think I would switch the order of the pieces, as I felt like the first and last stories were the weakest. I almost gave up during the first story (Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones) because I found the timeline hopping jarring and the characters largely unlikeable. I simply struggled to understand their behaviour towards each other, probably because I felt like we never really got under their skin. As for The Masker, the story at the end of the book, I thought it felt rushed and I had no time to care about the lead in the story, but I have no doubt that other readers will feel differently.

But I thought that The Chaser and Stag Dance (the main novella in the story) were remarkable. Here Torres really allows her reader to get under the skin of her characters and to understand the choices they make. You can feel their confusion, desperation, affection, yearning, anger, passion, disgust and more. As a reader I felt drawn in rather than kept at arm's length like I did during the other two stories, and for me the ending of Stag Dance was the highlight of the whole collection.

I was thrilled to read Stag Dance, having previously enjoyed Peters’ Detransition, Baby. Going in, I didn’t realize this was a collection of four short stories rather than a novel, which slightly shifted my expectations. As with many short story collections, some pieces resonated more than others. The first story was my personal favorite, while the titular Stag Dance didn’t fully work for me.
One of the biggest challenges I faced was the abrupt endings and the disjointed feel between the stories. There was little continuity, which left me wanting a stronger thematic thread to tie everything together. Additionally, Stag Dance itself didn’t explore its premise as deeply as I had hoped based on the blurb and title. Compared to Peters’ previous work, I found the social commentary and depth of exploration a bit lacking.
That said, one of Peters’ greatest strengths—character development—remains a highlight. Each story introduces well-fleshed-out characters with unique narratives and perspectives, making for an engaging read. While this collection wasn’t entirely for me, I appreciate the opportunity to experience these different voices and stories.

3.5/5 stars

Torrey Peters has a lot of fun here playing with genre as much as with gender. Written over the course of ten years, there's a clear throughline from story to story even though their settings and tones vary.

Going to buck (ha!) a trend I'm seeing in other reviews and tell you that I loved the title story the most. The argot of the lumber pirates sings, and the difficulty the Babe Bunyan has with facing and articulating something there weren't really words for then is so vivid and heart wrenching. I know that Babe's going to hang around in my mind and my heart for a while.

The other stories are shorter than "Stag Dance", and those that have been available before ("Infect your Friends and Loved Ones" and "The Masker") are really worth re-reading in this context. The order of the stories here feels very intentional, their themes build on one another so effectively.

If you enjoyed Detransition, Baby make some time for Stag Dance, you'll be glad you did.

Many thanks to Penguin Random House and Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for this honest review.

Stag Dance is a stunning and extremely memorable collection of short stories. The title story, more like a novella in length, is a truly exceptional allegory of our society's treatment of the trans community and truly encaspulates the hurdles that trans people face in even the most basic aspects of life. The other stories are also very high quality and I enjoyed the entirety but Stag Dance in particular was a real stand out for me.
This collection is heavy on trans experiences but also explores other themes such as discrimination, illicit relationships and gender in a more general manner. These stories are insightful and witty, I will be highly recommending this book.

A beautifully written book. four stories that somehow merge and become one.
This wasn't for me though. It didn't grab me.
It wasn't anything to do with the topics of the book, I just couldn't relate to anything.

I had read and loved two of the stories from this book a while ago since they were available on Peters’ website.

Review of The Masker - Krys is a young trans woman trying to learn who she is. She goes to Vegas for a convention, of sorts, for trans women. At a party she meets an older trans woman who takes a shine to her and wants to help guide her. However she also meets a trans-fetishing man who wants to be her sugar daddy. Krys finds herself with a pretty intense decision to make.

This is dark & filled with longing. Krys is someone you want the best for but it’s unclear if she knows how to find it for herself. The entire thing feels almost dreamlike and as though the edges of reality are frayed. A great short read!

Review of Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones - In a post-apocalyptic world no one can produce hormones so everyone has to choose their gender. Lexi, who was trans before the event, has carved out a small life for herself in this new world. We see glimpses of her past in The Before & also what/who is motivating her.

I got more from this than I have from some full page novels. There was an entire narrative arc here in under 100 pages and although I will always read more Torrey Peters, I felt very satisfied upon finishing this.

The story I hadn’t read, The Chaser, is set at a college and is from the POV of a guy who says he is straight but is fooling around with his roommate. He’s also pretty keen for said roommate to wear women’s clothes for him.

The novel, Stag Dance, was so wildly unexpected. It’s about loggers living in a camp deep in the forest who are looking forward to a dance. The men can decide to mark themselves as women for this dance but for the MC it seems to run just a little deeper than that.

As I said I loved the two stories I had already read, I liked The Chaser (there is a description of animal cruelty that I actually had to skip past it was a bit much) and I was so surprised by Stag Dance. I think Peters writes about transness in the most original and captivating ways, illustrating that the trans experience is ultimately infinite. It can be lived in so many different ways by so many different people. And for that reason I really think Torrey Peters has the range!

Detransition, Baby was one of my favourite books of 2021 so I was extremely excited to read Torrey Peters’ new book, Stag Dance (which is out in March).

It’s made up of three short stories, and one longer novella. The first story, an early work of Peters - a dystopian bio-terrorism hormone sci-fi - is good, but I was really grabbed by the second novella, The Chaser. Set in a boarding school in the unfolding relationship between two boys, it immediately reminded me of Peters’ fantastic gift for story and characters. Stag Dance is the much longer novella and is utterly fantastic. Queer lumberjack escapades and folklore, filled with the most wonderful, immersive dialogue and terminology. The internal voice of the protagonist, Babe, is so charming and earnest that I was sad to leave the world that Peters created. The final story, The Masker, is probably the darkest turn of the collection (although these are all undeniably dark stories in one way or another) and looks at the dilemma of being faced with a profound choice about who you are and seeking easy fantasy over a difficult, vulnerable reality.

One of my favourite things about Peters is how she writes about desire - the cruelty present in both going without, and in being too desired; and the purely vulnerable, often humiliating nature of desire. The way people rejected by the world both turn to and turn on each other to claw back what limited power they can access. She paints the various power imbalances and negotiations of relationships (both in intimate relationships and within communities) with an excruciatingly fine brush. It feels great to see a writer like this, who writes so fearlessly and honestly, be embraced by the mainstream as she has, particularly in the current climate. It couldn’t be more well-deserved.