Looking for your next read? Welcome to Bazaar Book Chat, an inside look at our editors’ Slack channel, where we candidly review the latest literary releases.
Rosa Sanchez (senior news editor)
Hi @here welcome to another edition of Bazaar Book Chat. This March we read Stag Dance by Torrey Peters. The novel tells three very distinct stories relating to the trans experience, each in a different era and setting, but all connected by the invisible string that is the need for community.
First thoughts? There was a lot to unpack.
Sarah Olivieri (senior designer)
Not that I disliked it, but none of the stories felt “resolved,” or I guess had the happy endings I tend to look for or seek out in my book selection. I always wanted to keep reading. Like, wait, but then what happens???
Ariana Marsh (senior features editor)
I loved Peters’s debut novel Detransition, Baby, and Stag Dance was a vastly different read, but I loved it.
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Rosa Sanchez
They definitely all felt like snippets, and kept me so interested that I would’ve read a whole book on each, but I also loved it.
Izzy Grinspan (editorial director)
To me, this was really about the lumberjacks, with some smaller pieces attached.
Ariana Marsh
100%
Rosa Sanchez
I like what the author did here, because when you imagine this lumberjack setting of men chopping down trees illegally in the middle of the woods, you think of like, manly men—basically toxic masculinity. But, our narrator is a sweet, gigantic man who realizes he wants to be a woman, and in the end decides to show her true self even though it costs her everything.
Izzy Grinspan
Did you guys find the lumberjack slang difficult?
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Rosa Sanchez
A little, but it got me in the mindset
Ariana Marsh
Side note: I read that during the writing of the titular piece Torrey was building a sauna at her off-grid home in Vermont with her partner and it partially inspired the lumberjack story, which I love.
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Rosa Sanchez
OMG, lol. That’s really funny.
What did you think about the character’s evolution? how she starts off calling herself ugly and huge, but then transforms before our eyes in the stag dance?
Ariana Marsh
I think it shows that when you feel like you’re able to express and embody your true self authentically you automatically feel more comfortable and confident.
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Rosa Sanchez
The way most of the men acted around our lumberjack narrator, the Babe, was also very triggering, but leans into the classic cis male insecurity around the LGBTQIA+ community.
Izzy Grinspan
Can we talk about Lisen? I thought his relationship with the Babe was so well done. They go back and forth between being allies and enemies, sometimes in the space of a single conversation. They both felt really three-dimensional to me. (Also thought it was hilarious how the Babe kept calling Lisen “saucy” and then saying things like, “That one was really full of sauce.” It reminded me a little of the way that Cormac McCarthy uses old-fashioned language.)
Sarah Olivieri
I agree, I really liked the juxtaposition of this large “ugly” strong lumberjack and petite, long-lashed Lisen with the same inward desires.
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Rosa Sanchez
It felt like the most honest relationship in there. Like they needed each other for support, but also competed against each other, kind of like in our last story, about the group of trans women and “closeted crossdressers” who united at a convention in Las Vegas. Our narrator there wants to be part of the sisterhood, but more than that, she wants to be wanted by a man, and so she ends up betraying one of her own.
Sarah Olivieri
That was definitely one of the stories where I was like, wait I need to hear more. I thought it was going to end with Sally (our narrator’s friend who she ends up betraying) getting out [after being arrested] and calling up the narrator’s mom and outing her.
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Izzy Grinspan
The mom stuff made me so uncomfortable!
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Rosa Sanchez
I feel like we also got the sisters-versus-enemies storyline in the first chapter, which is about an imaginary post-pandemic society plagued by a virus passed on by a group of trans women. Our narrator in that one is patient zero. What did you feel about her story—how she feels rejected by everyone after contagion, and hates the person who contaminated her, but still seeks comfort in her because they are, in some way, the same?
Joel Calfee (assistant editor)
I saw a lot of parallels between that story and the history of the AIDS epidemic, which I thought was very purposeful. I think Peters does a great job at showing how a crisis that inadvertently affects trans people can make them feel isolated, but also create an even stronger sense of community.
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Sarah Olivieri
I understand the need for companionship as a means of survival in that scenario, but I’m a grudge holder and I just don’t know how easily I could forgive here. She made her patient zero, which led to a disease that made her half blind and Katniss Everdeen.
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Rosa Sanchez
Not Katniss. 😂
Joel Calfee
It also brought up some triggering feelings from the COVID-19 pandemic, which I think likely influenced the story too since it’s so much closer in the rearview. There was a lot of analyzing how we react in these situations, how we look for scapegoats, the guilt we feel, but also the ways in which we choose our own happiness just to make it through such horrible times, etc.
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Too close to home, these contagion stories need to stop! Lol.
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Rosa Sanchez
Agreed! The violence and hiding but then like bouts of neediness and passion. Re: the AIDS epidemic though, you’re so right, and I think all these stories have a nod to that kind of disaster where even if you aren’t actively trying to be, like, a spokesperson for your community, it becomes so necessary, and sometimes your enemies within your community are your only allies.
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Also I am amazed that the author nailed so many voices and so many vibes with these stories.
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Sarah Olivieri
YES! Reading the “Stag Dance” chapter right into “The Masker,” I was like wow the writing style here are so different, it could’ve been two completely different authors.
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Rosa Sanchez
Oh, one last thought about lumberjack. It was interesting/fun that even though the Babe accepted herself finally, because she was still so rejected by everyone, she became the literal forest monster that everyone feared, and she was fine with it. Like, I may be a monster in other people’s eyes, but I’m good.
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Our Bazaar Book Chat pick for April is Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry. Pick up your copy of the book here, and read along with us.
