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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 into an array of intimacy and connections.
Author: Andrea Lawlor
Paperback Published 25 February 2020 320 pages
Review by Kae
A fun, winding, addictive novel following the titular character, Paul, who has the power to change bodily forms/gender presentation at will. This minor magical realist element doesn’t overshadow the realness of the book, but rather reveals the fantasies and radical possibilities of gender expression when it is whittled down so simplistic to lumps, bumps, additions and subtractions, of body composition: and attraction too then, whether lesbian, gay, or otherwise, also as fluid and worldbuilding in itself, though of course still messy and complicated by its own right. At it’s core, this book is a queer coming of age saga that portrays it’s lead as loveable while also riddled with his own messy, avoidant traits. What I loved most about the book is how place too felt like a character, a vivid portrait of 90s queer urban America, and it’s plethora of subcultures, that made me elicit a rare (albeit self-indulgent) ‘I wish I was there !!!’ type reaction. Pulpy without being derivative or too surface-level, Paul captures a vibe that I honestly just ate up, so strongly character driven and audacious in it’s queerness.