After the success of her hit debut novel Detransition, Baby, author Torrey Peters was held hostage by the expectations of its readers. The book explored divorce and motherhood, offering a unique trans perspective that went beyond transness itself. It was my favourite novel on womanhood in years. Plenty of others felt the same way; the book was nominated for the 2021 Women’s Prize for Fiction and won the PEN/Hemingway Award the following year.
But instead of choosing to appease her new fandom of female and queer readers with a tender story about, I don’t know, sad women, she wrote Stag Dance, a strange first-person novella about a horny male lumberjack community with a penchant for rituals.
