Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
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Average rating4
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.
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Not sure why this one took me so long to finish, because I liked it very much. A gender-shifting Paul (could sort of be compared to Virginia Woolf's Orlando) mutates through college/punk life in Iowa, Provincetown, and San Francisco, pretty much being Paul/Polly throughout, depending on sexual encounter preferences. Lots of Patti Smith, classic rock music, Michigan Womyn's Festival references.
It's feel like it's been forever since I've read an honest to goodness adult literary fiction book! Because of that, it took me longer than it should have to finish this but I really enjoyed it! I saw in another review or maybe a blurb that someone called Paul an “anti-hero” and I'm not sure that's strictly true. I feel like maybe he's just in his 20s?! Aren't we all kind of assholes when we're young?!
Anyway, I loved this story of becoming and fluidity and learning how to adult. Beautifully written and surprisingly funny!
