Andrea Lawlor: Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (2020, Pan Macmillan)
320 pages
English language
Published July 15, 2020 by Pan Macmillan.
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 …
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.
Damn this book felt long and boring. Mostly, nothing happens except that Paul/Polly moves around Iowa City/Michigan/Provincetown/San Francisco and fucks around. No tension, no bigger story. I do have to appreciate however, how this book visits quite some different sides and forms and subcultures of gay and lesbian communities. Paul's shapeshifting allows it.
A chaotic gender crisis through the power of Paul's/Polly's secret ability to shapeshift; blending himself to fit into other scenes to please others in underground 1990s gay bars as a true horny genderfluid figuring out his own identity among the vastness of queer life. It almost feels like a genderfluid coming of age story in the sense of having the true freedom to explore who you are deep inside, free of the constraints of appearence. I can't say I've encountered anything like this before!
