Stag Dance
A Novel & Stories
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- ¥2,000
発行者による作品情報
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “This inventive, boundary-pushing follow-up to Detransition, Baby . . . [takes] on gender, transness and lives on the margins in all of their gorgeously complicated glory.”—People
“Hot, heartbreaking, and thrillingly victorious.”—Miranda July, New York Times bestselling author of All Fours
NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW EDITORS’ CHOICE • ONE OF VULTURE'S TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR • A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: NPR, The Washington Post, Vanity Fair, Electric Lit, them, Chicago Public Library
In this collection of one novel and three stories, bestselling author 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 stories 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 story, “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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In this electrifying collection of three stories and a novella from Peters (Detransition Baby), trans characters explore desire, identity, and love. "Infect your Friends and Loved Ones," the postapocalyptic opener, follows patient zero in Seattle during a pandemic that halts humans' production of sex hormones. The narrator, once a loner in the area's trans community, considers who she can trust. In "The Chaser," an evocative coming-of-age tale, a boarding school junior forms a secret relationship with his femme roommate, Robbie. Peters expertly builds tension as the narrator questions his sexuality, rationalizing that he's not gay because he's not turned on by any of the more masculine guys in the dorm. The funny yet heart-wrenching title novella, set sometime during the primacy of steam engines and written in the style of a tall tale, may be Peters's best work yet. When the boss at an illegal logging camp announces a dance, which anyone can attend as a woman, Babe, the strongest and ugliest lumberjack, taps into a long-suppressed yearning: "I had many times wondered in earnest about being courted as a woman." In the unsettling closer, "The Masker," Krys attends a trans feminine gathering in Las Vegas. When one guest arrives in a full body silicone woman suit, Krys contemplates who counts as trans and what she is willing to sacrifice for her transition. Peters explores her characters' conundrums with striking honesty, revealing how they're bound by indecision and insecurities from finding happiness, and she exhibits spectacular flexibility with language and form. It's a marvel.
