Torrey Peters is clearly interested in shapeshifting. Flux is the predominant state in Stag Dance, a collection of four short stories that follows her lauded debut novel, Detransition, Baby. In each story, we meet a character determined to metamorphose – to shift physically from the gender they were assigned at birth. Ten years into her own experience with feminising hormone therapy, Peters is fluent in fluidity. For the most part, she moves with ease from one narratorial voice to the next.

The three shorter stories – ‘Infect Your Friends and Loved Ones’, ‘The Chaser’ and ‘The Masker’ – are persuasive and easy to read. We find ourselves, variously, in a hormone-induced gender apocalypse, an erotically charged boarding-school dormitory and a trans women’s party bus cruising down the Las Vegas Strip. As Peters slips into her characters’ minds, she beckons us into their worlds. 

The titular story, ‘Stag Dance’, is the weakest of the quartet. It is much the longest, too, which is a pity. We pass the winter season with Babe Bunyan, a timber pirate who feels that his bulk and manly features preclude him from feminine presentation. Matters spiral when the lead