Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
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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Paul Polydoris is a bartender at the only gay club in Iowa City and can change his body at will. The novel follows him through 1993 across queer scenes, drag shows, and zine culture from Iowa to Provincetown.
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl was written by Andrea Lawlor and published in 2017. It is widely cited as a defining novel of trans and gender-fluid literary fiction in the 2010s.
Yes. The novel contains explicit on-page sexual content as the protagonist Paul shape-shifts through different gendered embodiments. The eroticism is central to the book's exploration of identity.
Yes. The novel contains explicit on-page sexual content as the protagonist Paul shape-shifts through different gendered embodiments. The eroticism is central to the book's exploration of identity.
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is 336 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl takes most readers 5 to 7 hours to finish.
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a standalone novel by Andrea Lawlor, not part of a series.
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
