Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

Paperback, 352 pages

Published by Vintage.

ISBN:
978-0-525-56618-2
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OCLC Number:
1076499997

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5 stars (1 review)

It's 1993 and Paul Polydoris tends bar at the only gay club in a university town thrumming with politics and partying. He studies queer theory, has a dyke best friend, makes zines, and is a flâneur with a rich dating life. But Paul's also got a secret: he's a shapeshifter. Oscillating wildly from Riot Grrrl to leather cub, Women's Studies major to trade, Paul transforms his body at will in a series of adventures that take him from Iowa City to Boystown to Provincetown and finally to San Francisco--a journey through the deep queer archives of struggle and pleasure. Andrea Lawlor's debut novel offers a speculative history of early '90s identity politics during the heyday of ACT UP and Queer Nation. Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a riotous, razor-sharp bildungsroman whose hero/ine wends his way through a world gutted by loss, pulsing with music, and opening …

4 editions

The right book at the right time in the right place

5 stars

This was such a great holiday read, I loved it! I know many would understand 'Holiday read' to mean shallow, fun-but-devoid-of-literary-merits. Here, I use it to mean: joyful (though also heartbreaking at times), very queer and very, very horny, with loads of really well-written sex scenes.

It is sold as a queer-er, 1990s Orlando, and I would need to have read Orlando (on my list) to be able to comment on that. What I can say is that Paul is a careless gay boy, a ready-to-fall-in-love-so-hard dyke, a curious gender-queer person, constantly trying to have sex as a way to connect, have a fun, feel alive, deaden the pain, self-destruct, or just while the time away. They can be a sissy boy, a hunky gay man, a soft butch, or a feminine girl flirting with frat boys at parties. Sometimes it goes well, sometimes it goes horribly wrong. Mortality is …