Andrea Lawlor

'Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is quite simply one of the most exciting - and one of the most fun - novels of the decade.' Garth Greenwell 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 lesbian 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 into an array of intimacy and connections. 'Playful, sexy, smart, and like nothing else I -or you - have ever read before.' Carmen Maria Machado

Paul Takes the Form of A Mortal Girl

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

Patrick Book

3.75-4, to clarify. This was about as satisfying as a story about a shape-shifting human can be without ever answering the central question of how Paul and his counterpart are able to change the form of their bodies. 

But who really cares, I guess? Instead Lawlor tells a fairly gripping coming of age/coming of gender/coming of sexuality/coming of…coming, I guess, story wherein the mutability of Paul’s body conflicts with his youthful confidence that he knows without a doubt what makes a man or woman a “real” man or woman, what makes a person gay or bi or straight or human. Even when he physically embodies a woman for months at a time Lawlor refers to Paul/Polly as “him,” Paul’s ever-shifting nature encouraging the reader to both divorce themselves from whatever norms they’re used to and lose themselves in the story. 

Lawlor shows significant maturity as a writer, doing a remarkable job of drawing out a character that could easily have been overshadowed by their supernatural nature. Paul is well-drawn as an uncertain, wanderlust-filled youngster who is vulnerable and, at times, a somewhat odious person. The 90s setting allows Lawlor to soak the novel in the riot grrl/punk/art rock culture of the day that they clearly love, and the AIDS epidemic casts an admittedly predictable (but still impactful) pall when needed. The ending was not as satisfying as I might have wanted, but I’m a dumb old romantic at heart. 

Other reviews seem to harp on the overt sexuality pervasive throughout the novel. You need to have some spice in your recipe, and I’ll admit there’s a whole lot of paprika in this one. But it is far from pointless, as some reviewers suggest; if you could embody whatever bodily form you wanted it may be only natural to explore every possibility available. Paul’s promiscuity also serves to underscore the weight of his emerging feelings when forms/recalls his more meaningful relationships. Plus: there’s nothing wrong with a book being horny! Normalize horny lit that isn’t embarrassing or badly done!

All in all, pretty perplexing but also pretty satisfying. I haven’t had this many thoughts in a review in a long time!

Sohini Roy

** spoiler alert **
           When I bought this book, I was really excited about it because I expected to feel connected to the characters, to feel connected to their trauma and their stories and their relationships with people. I didn’t really feel like that with Paul though, and the entire time i read through his journey of being a miserable, messy, irresponsible individual that honestly sucks at being a friend to a miserable, messy, irresponsible individual that still sucks at being a friend but has a boyfriend? I felt like I witnessed very little character development and the entire story just kind of felt all over the place. I’m not really sure what the point of this book was or what I was supposed to feel while reading it, because even though he briefly addressed his condition with Robin, he didn’t seem to learn any more about himself or like…the book didn’t feel like it had a conclusive ending? It just confused me- all I can say is that it was well written in terms of detail, though the story did not live up to my expectations.

Fiction. LGBTQIA Studies. Women's Studies. 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 fl�neur 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 into an array of intimacy and connections. "I love this book, in all its ecstasy, wit, and hilarity. I laughed out loud in recognition and appreciation of Lawlor's spot-on portrait of an era, scene, and soundtrack, the novel's particular sluice of pleasures, fluids, and feelings. The liberatory rush of Lawlor's writing is as rare as it is contagious, not to mention HOT. Paul is on fire, and an antihero for the ages."--Maggie Nelson "Fast-paced and cheeky, full of intellectual riffs, of observations so sharp they feel like gossip, PAUL TAKES THE FORM OF A MORTAL GIRL is a touchingly sweet-hearted and deeply cool book. Andrea Lawlor has written a magic story, showing us the real magic of our world in the process. If you like your humor supersmart and your theory full of camp and irony and heart, you won't be able to put this book down."--Michelle Tea "I am such a fan. Andrea Lawlor's prose is restless, muscular and playful and uncannily able to zero in on the cultural details that make the world Paul is traveling through shimmer and pucker with truth. Stealth too. Lawlor is either a good 'liver' or a good liar. They know. PAUL TAKES THE FORM OF A MORTAL GIRL Lawlor takes the ancient trope of 'the changeling' and makes it be me, you. Paul's such a funny book that studies how studied we are especially when we go out. Who do we seek and who or what is seeking? It's a tight satisfying masterpiece which I am very glad to hand you if you happen to love sex, clothes, literature which now includes the apparitional blessing of a new elastic genre (which Paul initiates) that seamlessly makes both what's out there and in here less lonely, less fixed and less fake. This book updates the present. In Andrea Lawlor's fiction the dream walks, and I watch. Paul's got flickering feet like Mercury."--Eileen Myles

I want to give it 5 stars because I think the idea and execution of the point and understanding of gender and generally the way the novel played with the construct was really visceral and thought provoking at times but I didn’t find myself as hooked into the story as much as I wanted to be, still a really great queer read

Hannah

Valeria M

Abigail Joyann

I heard this was a hypnotic read.
Intrigued.

jiaqi kang

i really need to read more queer stuff - this was exhilarating. do some ppl really just know no straight people?

Maggie

A book about a non-binary shapeshifter that I really wanted to love, but couldn’t. For a book that is supposedly about pleasure and queerness and being non-binary, it certainly liked to look at things through a binary lens. I think I was most disappointed by how obviously it still relies on the male gaze, especially when talking about butch women. Saying that all women, “really long to wear a cheerleading uniform” isn’t the flex you think it is.

Men are the center of the story. Women are objects- sometimes hot and unattainable and mysterious, other times broad shouldered and always there but easy to cheat on and never really get to know. It’s just another iteration of the virgin/whore, Mary/Mary Magdalene dichotomy. If the misogyny was an attempt to build an unlikeable narrator, fine. I typically enjoy unlikable narrators. It was not done well here.

There were some lovely descriptions of gender euphoria. But this was not for me.

Rose Stanley

So the only thing stopping me from really liking this book as opposed to just liking it are some of the sex scenes, as they're described in graphic detail and some of them are just nasty (and not in a good way, lol). 

That said, the worst ones are in the first quarter of the book so if you can make it past the 25% mark then I think you'll be glad you did. The writing is good, the concept is clever, and the story and protagonist are both engaging. I devoured this book, or at least the last three quarters, in 3 sittings.

In short, a great queer coming-of-age story, with some magical realism thrown in.

Jessie Bertram

4.5
LOVED the main story but the short stories in between distracted me a little bit

Paul Takes the Form of A Mortal Girl

Reviews