In this collection of one novel and three stories, author Torrey Peters’s eye for the rough edges of community and desire push the limits of trans writing.
Discomforting ... Peters excels at plumbing the murky hearts of queer people ... A great Torrey Peters story feels like punching yourself in the face, laughing at the bleeding bitch in the mirror and then shamefacedly realizing you’re aroused by the blood on your lips. The four pieces in Stag Dance will leave you bruised, broken and wanting more.
My favorite of the pieces is the title novel, which is also undoubtedly the most stylish of the bunch. Its narration, littered with lumberjack slang, is beautifully poetic ... Peters’s book is important, but putting aside for a moment the weight of that unasked-for responsibility, Stag Dance is a marvelous follow-up to a tremendous debut.
Peters’s new book chronicles a grittier aesthetic milieu ... The stories, jagged tales of sissies, losers, and assholes, showcase a more expansive palette and are written with sharp prose that crackles with transgressive glee ... The prose in this story is smooth like slate, devoid of any modern references to movies, technology, or gender as we now envision it ... Gender, like art, Peters argues, is not always explicable
