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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.
10 pages, Audiobook
First published November 1, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 2,741 reviews
December 31, 2021
This book is wild and hypnotic and unusual - it defies categorization, thus staying true to its topic: Can people overcome the compulsion to categorize others? Set in 1993, our protagonist Paul Polydoris is a 22-year-old queer shapeshifter who - sometimes as Paul, sometimes as Polly - explores the gay scene in Iowa City and from there drifts to Boystown, Provincetown and finally to San Francisco. Wrapped in this surging tale full of sex and adventure, there is also a love story: Polly enters a relationship with a lesbian who struggles with the fact that he is a man AND a woman. (Lawlor doesn't use "they" in the narrative, because this option didn't exist in the 90's - the person who is both Paul and Polly is always referred to as "he").
Talking about their debut, non-binary author Andrea Lawlor explained: "I sometimes describe the novel as thinly veiled autobiographical fiction, but of course I am not literally a shapeshifter." (The book also proves that they must have a great sense of humor! :-)) Paul/Polly is torn, because on the one hand, he is happy with who he is and enjoys having sex with different people - this is a sex positive story. On the other hand, he struggles with the fact that (even within the queer community) there is a pressure to conform to certain categories, while he knows that his non-binary, shapeshifting identity is about refusing to do just that.
Lawlor's text vibrates with references to 90's pop and underground culture and radiates the joy of being young, but it also depicts how discrimination and the ravaging AIDS epidemic have been threatening the queer community. On top of that, the author infuse their text with references to Greek mythology, thus balancing the story between a period piece and a story about the human condition as such. "Polydorus" is a common name in Greek mythology, and the adventures and travels of Paul Polydoris, the magical shapeshifter, have an allegorical quality. In addition to that, Lawlor intersperses her narrative with little vignettes, written in different text forms but all reflecting and commenting on the main storyline.
In its unusual narrative approach, the book reminded of Akwaeke Emezi's Freshwater. At the same time, Paul/Polly would be a great friend for Joshua Whitehead's two-spirited Jonny Appleseed. All of these books have taught me things I didn't know about, while at the same time just being very good literature. I am curious what Lawlor will write next.
Talking about their debut, non-binary author Andrea Lawlor explained: "I sometimes describe the novel as thinly veiled autobiographical fiction, but of course I am not literally a shapeshifter." (The book also proves that they must have a great sense of humor! :-)) Paul/Polly is torn, because on the one hand, he is happy with who he is and enjoys having sex with different people - this is a sex positive story. On the other hand, he struggles with the fact that (even within the queer community) there is a pressure to conform to certain categories, while he knows that his non-binary, shapeshifting identity is about refusing to do just that.
Lawlor's text vibrates with references to 90's pop and underground culture and radiates the joy of being young, but it also depicts how discrimination and the ravaging AIDS epidemic have been threatening the queer community. On top of that, the author infuse their text with references to Greek mythology, thus balancing the story between a period piece and a story about the human condition as such. "Polydorus" is a common name in Greek mythology, and the adventures and travels of Paul Polydoris, the magical shapeshifter, have an allegorical quality. In addition to that, Lawlor intersperses her narrative with little vignettes, written in different text forms but all reflecting and commenting on the main storyline.
In its unusual narrative approach, the book reminded of Akwaeke Emezi's Freshwater. At the same time, Paul/Polly would be a great friend for Joshua Whitehead's two-spirited Jonny Appleseed. All of these books have taught me things I didn't know about, while at the same time just being very good literature. I am curious what Lawlor will write next.
August 20, 2023
'Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl' strives so hard to be relevant and influential for LGBT causes, that it ironically discredits the movement by laboring its messages and featuring thoughtless characters who are too preoccupied with sexual orientation. The novel collapses under its own weight for a number of reasons...
It is terribly paced. The story races from one moment to the next without any flow or development. Its vague plot line consists mostly of the protagonist's wild and unrealistic sexual encounters that are described in needless detail, to the point where they just become plain gross. Despite the author constantly reaching for the shock factor with the X-rated content, the novel still somehow manages to be very dull.
The meticulous detail that is present for the sex scenes, disappears for every other aspect of the novel. The descriptions of the general scenes and settings are so sparse that they often leave the reader to try paint their own picture of the story. The prose really fail to appeal to the senses and are prosaic in almost every way. In addition, folk tales are dispersed throughout the novel and they really do not gel with the narrative.
Lastly, the author is so fixated on constructing the sexuality of the characters that she forgets to give them personalities. While gender fluidity is an important part of their being, they don't appear to have a range of emotions or minds of their own. Also, Paul's confusing sexual anatomy does not receive enough explanation.
Overall, this book is really not worth the read.
It is terribly paced. The story races from one moment to the next without any flow or development. Its vague plot line consists mostly of the protagonist's wild and unrealistic sexual encounters that are described in needless detail, to the point where they just become plain gross. Despite the author constantly reaching for the shock factor with the X-rated content, the novel still somehow manages to be very dull.
The meticulous detail that is present for the sex scenes, disappears for every other aspect of the novel. The descriptions of the general scenes and settings are so sparse that they often leave the reader to try paint their own picture of the story. The prose really fail to appeal to the senses and are prosaic in almost every way. In addition, folk tales are dispersed throughout the novel and they really do not gel with the narrative.
Lastly, the author is so fixated on constructing the sexuality of the characters that she forgets to give them personalities. While gender fluidity is an important part of their being, they don't appear to have a range of emotions or minds of their own. Also, Paul's confusing sexual anatomy does not receive enough explanation.
Overall, this book is really not worth the read.
January 25, 2018
I wrote this as an introduction to Andrea's reading for the NYC book launch at Bureau of General Services--Queer Division, November 2017:
I first met Paul – the novel’s protagonist – in Philadelphia in 2005 or 2006, in one of my first workshops in Temple’s graduate creative writing program. It was a short story at that time and though, as a young still-presumably-straight person there was much I didn’t yet understand about the live queer world it captured, I remember being struck by Paul’s aliveness on the page, his roving desires and boundless curiosity about other people and how and what they desire. How lucky we are that these exhilarated, exhilarating desires and curiosities could not be contained in the space of short fiction, that we have the full breadth and sweep of a novel to enjoy them.
Andrea was my first friend at Temple and quickly became a force of generosity and a well of cultural knowledge in my life, connecting me to countless writers who would become formative, gifting me copies of Dennis Cooper’s Discontents anthology, Joe Brainard’s I Remember, the 5x5 with Laurie Weeks’ Swallow. I take note of this here because this praxis of bringing queer literature to those in need reflects both Andrea’s generosity as well as their utter devotion to queer literary community—a devotion that anchors the novel’s many semantic and stylistic citations, which include Brainard, John Rechy, Samuel Delany, James Baldwin, Eileen Myles, Frank O’Hara, and so on.
And as Paul, our literate hero, notes, Virginia Woolf’s gender-bending Orlando may be his closest kin. Paul is a queer shapeshifter; he can change his body at will. Whereas Orlando swaps genders within a straight context, queerly swooping her/his way across bourgeois English history, Paul queers the queer 90s, subtly troubling the various queer subcultures into which he gains entry. Variously a leather cub, a Riot Grrrl, a stoic butch, and a monogamish lesbian vegan, Paul is never stably “man” nor “woman” but both/and; and no matter what sex he embodies at the moment, he can butch it up or down. As he himself observes, he “belong[s] in all the genders”; his gender identity is thus enthusiastically capacious and expansively cross-identificatory. Is Paul gay? Bi? A dyke? Transmasculine? Transfeminine? Nonbinary? Intersex? Paul is all. He’s fantasy. And he’s desire.
It seems as though sex has become less represented, more implied than described, in a lot of contemporary queer literature. “I miss the transgressive queer 90s,” I complained in my book club last month. Andrea revives them here, investigating an impressively broad range of queer sexual encounters spanning multiple sexual communities. The result is an adamantly pro-queer, pro-sex novel. It’s not just the frank depictions of sex that mark the novel as rooted in the 90s; like Orlando, Paul is an historical creature, made in and of the 90s, where he hops between queer cultures from Iowa City to Boystown Chicago to the Michigan Women’s Music Festival, from Provincetown to San Francisco, with ACT UP-era New York beating strong in the background. If Andrea has written a historical novel, it’s history made present-tense, 90s queer politics refracted through the lens of contemporary queer and trans discourse. Paul, our slippery shapeshifter, straddles both. In the looking back, history shakes loose and we remember, we remember, we remember: and we match then to now, past to possibility. Even as his body refuses fixity, Paul’s character remains constant: irrepressibly witty and pretty but mostly gay; a shark, a hunter, a pleasure-seeker; a flaneur seeking contact, an artist accumulating experience.
I first met Paul – the novel’s protagonist – in Philadelphia in 2005 or 2006, in one of my first workshops in Temple’s graduate creative writing program. It was a short story at that time and though, as a young still-presumably-straight person there was much I didn’t yet understand about the live queer world it captured, I remember being struck by Paul’s aliveness on the page, his roving desires and boundless curiosity about other people and how and what they desire. How lucky we are that these exhilarated, exhilarating desires and curiosities could not be contained in the space of short fiction, that we have the full breadth and sweep of a novel to enjoy them.
Andrea was my first friend at Temple and quickly became a force of generosity and a well of cultural knowledge in my life, connecting me to countless writers who would become formative, gifting me copies of Dennis Cooper’s Discontents anthology, Joe Brainard’s I Remember, the 5x5 with Laurie Weeks’ Swallow. I take note of this here because this praxis of bringing queer literature to those in need reflects both Andrea’s generosity as well as their utter devotion to queer literary community—a devotion that anchors the novel’s many semantic and stylistic citations, which include Brainard, John Rechy, Samuel Delany, James Baldwin, Eileen Myles, Frank O’Hara, and so on.
And as Paul, our literate hero, notes, Virginia Woolf’s gender-bending Orlando may be his closest kin. Paul is a queer shapeshifter; he can change his body at will. Whereas Orlando swaps genders within a straight context, queerly swooping her/his way across bourgeois English history, Paul queers the queer 90s, subtly troubling the various queer subcultures into which he gains entry. Variously a leather cub, a Riot Grrrl, a stoic butch, and a monogamish lesbian vegan, Paul is never stably “man” nor “woman” but both/and; and no matter what sex he embodies at the moment, he can butch it up or down. As he himself observes, he “belong[s] in all the genders”; his gender identity is thus enthusiastically capacious and expansively cross-identificatory. Is Paul gay? Bi? A dyke? Transmasculine? Transfeminine? Nonbinary? Intersex? Paul is all. He’s fantasy. And he’s desire.
It seems as though sex has become less represented, more implied than described, in a lot of contemporary queer literature. “I miss the transgressive queer 90s,” I complained in my book club last month. Andrea revives them here, investigating an impressively broad range of queer sexual encounters spanning multiple sexual communities. The result is an adamantly pro-queer, pro-sex novel. It’s not just the frank depictions of sex that mark the novel as rooted in the 90s; like Orlando, Paul is an historical creature, made in and of the 90s, where he hops between queer cultures from Iowa City to Boystown Chicago to the Michigan Women’s Music Festival, from Provincetown to San Francisco, with ACT UP-era New York beating strong in the background. If Andrea has written a historical novel, it’s history made present-tense, 90s queer politics refracted through the lens of contemporary queer and trans discourse. Paul, our slippery shapeshifter, straddles both. In the looking back, history shakes loose and we remember, we remember, we remember: and we match then to now, past to possibility. Even as his body refuses fixity, Paul’s character remains constant: irrepressibly witty and pretty but mostly gay; a shark, a hunter, a pleasure-seeker; a flaneur seeking contact, an artist accumulating experience.
August 27, 2021
I don't know how to rate this book, some things were above five stars for me (the writing); some things, were ehhhhhhhh.... and I hate not being able to be excited about a book featuring a genderfluid (arguably) bisexual antihero.
warning: delirious and hysterical review ahead.
'Paul' gives me awful cognitive dissonance: i want to love it, because it's queer and (allegorically at least) trans, and it celebrates so many things I personally celebrate: sexual freedom, gender expression, gleeful celebration of the gay self, of aesthetic and beauty and desire, wordplay, and giddy hyperanalysis of media (like, music).
But it chafes SO BAD, because it forwards, seems to subscribe to (and never examines) all the gendershit tropes that make cisqueer society alienating for those of us who are the 'freaks amongst the freaks.' The outcasts amongst the outcasts. Had Paul 'just' been a mid 90s twink out crusin and having adventures, the refusal to dig deeper would not have bothered me--I could have enjoyed it much more. But the book keeps hinting at doing more, while never actually doing more and this was (to me at least) incredibly frustrating. I was drowning in the fakedeep. I kept getting the impression that the book thought itself so progressive by the sheer deluge of queerness in it--hence no need to do more.
Paul (and Co) reminded me unpleasantly too much of people I’ve known, who are INCAPABLE of interacting with others beyond the ‘storefront’ of what that person’s social stance/position is. Everything is Performative, Ironic and Client Facing. Unable to ever step out of their own Role, swathed in all kinds of mysterious and inscrutable Gender and Queer (or Straight) Rules and Sleight of Hand. …..I get tired of being a living set piece on their stage of Me! The musical! and move away.... again, I realize that was maybe part of the point--(reinforced by the little fairy tale vignettes)---but for my taste, the book took this performance too far and pushed its own characters into gimmicks. The lack of self-awareness made me unable to discern if I was supposed to take this literally, or figuratively--if the narrator was gently mocking the characters' inability to be three dimensional; if this was a critique of mainstream gay culture-- or if they honestly believed they had written complex, multi-faceted characters. If I reach the end of the book and still can't say--I believe that's a problem.
This idea reached a fever pitch to me when Diane breaks up with Paul: she does it, because she thinks he can’t be happy being ‘she’ for the rest of their relationship, and if he can't be a she, they can have no relationship. My pansexual non-binary ass: BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT. ….if Paul loves Diane, and Diane loves Paul, how can his ‘body’ matter? OH yeah, because Diane is a lesbian, all invested in the lesbian identity, so Paul HAS TO be a girl, or she can’t love Paul, because otherwise, her whole Self would implode. (or something) Diane was one in a cabal of neverending queer stereotypes...
I don't require pat answers, or morals. Not everything has to be deep, and done a certain way, I could have easily accepted the shapeshifting as an allegory, or fantasy. Who hasn't (queer, trans, cis or straight?) fantasized about having a body they could alter physically to be any way that they wanted? In that sense, that power was universal and done differently, the shapeshifting could have been a metaphor that doesn't correspond to any particular identity or physical configuration.
But since it was done almost exclusively in a sexual context, I came away with the bad taste that transness (in the thin guise of shape shifting) was used as a neat sexual spice and plot device (without wanting to deal in any depth with the real life social fallout these things cause )---)))) Even more confusing that the author seems to be non-binary---some may say that adds authenticity to that aspect or makes it okay, but it just confuses me more.
Nor did the shallowness make it more 'fun'--it simply frustrated me by reminding me of the real life problems in queer circles, regards people who are entrenched in highly gendered camps, versus people who do not fit--a reality that the book pointed out but almost defiantly refused to address in any depth. Again, I am left wondering: why?
Paul mirrored this attitude: he challenges effectively nothing throughout the novel. Such an eerie lack of TENSION for me--don't get me wrong, it's nice to have a sex focused book not ruled entirely by drama, but NOTHING causes drama or conflict.(even the scene where diane confronts paul over his behavior at the music festival, may have been one of the calmest 'confrontation' scenes I'd ever read).
Nothing and nobody is fought for.
Many opportunities for interesting insights, or dynamics explored--simply passed by....
'well, maybe the author just wanted to write a fun character banging a ton of people, and not get mired in boring gender-sermonizing? you thought about that??'
I did!
Except, if that's the case, the sex really wasn't strong enough to hold it all up. the smutty scenes were as pleasurable to read as short, abrupt salvos graphically describing someone chewing with their mouth open. --I get that too--sometimes sex IS 'only' as fun or exciting or erotic as eating a piece of two day old pizza you're hoping won't give you botulism, or picking an infected scab, but yeah, this was eating cold pizza in your kitchen barefoot sex. this was popping a zit (but it doesn't pop and you just get a big red mark on your face and it sucks) sex.
Paul has a shitload of sex. He doesn’t have a physical type (I feel all of that, and that was something I really liked, and it resonated. Cue the Rea Sermmurd I don’t got no type. ) The narrator says at one point, what was sex, but newness? It’s a good idea, sex IS newness—but I argue, good sex.. is COMMUNICATION. In this book though… it was not. with the exception of Diane, all sex was just next. Next. Next. I get that too, not all sex is, by virtue of being sex, automatically exciting, but there is such a KALEIDOSCOPE of sex experiences that could've been described, that I kept waiting for!! But Paul consistently had ONE type of encounter:
Curt, sloppy,—often icky. Not the good icky. (at one point a partner is described as shooting ‘yellowish mucus’ into Paul’s mouth. …….. …..they both seemed unperturbed. ..........*ahem*.
Precisely because these connections seemed so… impersonal, bordering on the unappealing, I had no clue or insight as to what motivates him to seek out his 29992349309th encounter. Paul wasn't insecure or super needing validation; the sex seemed unsatisfying, he wasn't in it for the money. So then, why? Which circles right back to the characters lacking volume and a general lack of psychological tension...
In the end: AITA? for not loving this book, when a lot of people loved (or will) love it? Maybe i'm just a grinch? Maybe--the more time passed though, the more I kept thinking, this story could have been so much more... the author had the language, the background and the good premise to say something interesting and true about sex and gender (and about trans identities), ---I kept reading and hoping, but while the book was undoubtedly clever, like the characters, the writing seemed afraid to step out of its role of Relevant, Hip Queer Takes.
I finished it, feeling like I might after one of the myriad x encounters described: talking about it was more fun than doing it.
Acid Covers Rant Playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-efIj...
Diane Mix Side A tape Playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
warning: delirious and hysterical review ahead.
'Paul' gives me awful cognitive dissonance: i want to love it, because it's queer and (allegorically at least) trans, and it celebrates so many things I personally celebrate: sexual freedom, gender expression, gleeful celebration of the gay self, of aesthetic and beauty and desire, wordplay, and giddy hyperanalysis of media (like, music).
But it chafes SO BAD, because it forwards, seems to subscribe to (and never examines) all the gendershit tropes that make cisqueer society alienating for those of us who are the 'freaks amongst the freaks.' The outcasts amongst the outcasts. Had Paul 'just' been a mid 90s twink out crusin and having adventures, the refusal to dig deeper would not have bothered me--I could have enjoyed it much more. But the book keeps hinting at doing more, while never actually doing more and this was (to me at least) incredibly frustrating. I was drowning in the fakedeep. I kept getting the impression that the book thought itself so progressive by the sheer deluge of queerness in it--hence no need to do more.
Paul (and Co) reminded me unpleasantly too much of people I’ve known, who are INCAPABLE of interacting with others beyond the ‘storefront’ of what that person’s social stance/position is. Everything is Performative, Ironic and Client Facing. Unable to ever step out of their own Role, swathed in all kinds of mysterious and inscrutable Gender and Queer (or Straight) Rules and Sleight of Hand. …..I get tired of being a living set piece on their stage of Me! The musical! and move away.... again, I realize that was maybe part of the point--(reinforced by the little fairy tale vignettes)---but for my taste, the book took this performance too far and pushed its own characters into gimmicks. The lack of self-awareness made me unable to discern if I was supposed to take this literally, or figuratively--if the narrator was gently mocking the characters' inability to be three dimensional; if this was a critique of mainstream gay culture-- or if they honestly believed they had written complex, multi-faceted characters. If I reach the end of the book and still can't say--I believe that's a problem.
This idea reached a fever pitch to me when Diane breaks up with Paul: she does it, because she thinks he can’t be happy being ‘she’ for the rest of their relationship, and if he can't be a she, they can have no relationship. My pansexual non-binary ass: BUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUT. ….if Paul loves Diane, and Diane loves Paul, how can his ‘body’ matter? OH yeah, because Diane is a lesbian, all invested in the lesbian identity, so Paul HAS TO be a girl, or she can’t love Paul, because otherwise, her whole Self would implode. (or something) Diane was one in a cabal of neverending queer stereotypes...
I don't require pat answers, or morals. Not everything has to be deep, and done a certain way, I could have easily accepted the shapeshifting as an allegory, or fantasy. Who hasn't (queer, trans, cis or straight?) fantasized about having a body they could alter physically to be any way that they wanted? In that sense, that power was universal and done differently, the shapeshifting could have been a metaphor that doesn't correspond to any particular identity or physical configuration.
But since it was done almost exclusively in a sexual context, I came away with the bad taste that transness (in the thin guise of shape shifting) was used as a neat sexual spice and plot device (without wanting to deal in any depth with the real life social fallout these things cause )---)))) Even more confusing that the author seems to be non-binary---some may say that adds authenticity to that aspect or makes it okay, but it just confuses me more.
Nor did the shallowness make it more 'fun'--it simply frustrated me by reminding me of the real life problems in queer circles, regards people who are entrenched in highly gendered camps, versus people who do not fit--a reality that the book pointed out but almost defiantly refused to address in any depth. Again, I am left wondering: why?
Paul mirrored this attitude: he challenges effectively nothing throughout the novel. Such an eerie lack of TENSION for me--don't get me wrong, it's nice to have a sex focused book not ruled entirely by drama, but NOTHING causes drama or conflict.(even the scene where diane confronts paul over his behavior at the music festival, may have been one of the calmest 'confrontation' scenes I'd ever read).
Nothing and nobody is fought for.
Many opportunities for interesting insights, or dynamics explored--simply passed by....
'well, maybe the author just wanted to write a fun character banging a ton of people, and not get mired in boring gender-sermonizing? you thought about that??'
I did!
Except, if that's the case, the sex really wasn't strong enough to hold it all up. the smutty scenes were as pleasurable to read as short, abrupt salvos graphically describing someone chewing with their mouth open. --I get that too--sometimes sex IS 'only' as fun or exciting or erotic as eating a piece of two day old pizza you're hoping won't give you botulism, or picking an infected scab, but yeah, this was eating cold pizza in your kitchen barefoot sex. this was popping a zit (but it doesn't pop and you just get a big red mark on your face and it sucks) sex.
Paul has a shitload of sex. He doesn’t have a physical type (I feel all of that, and that was something I really liked, and it resonated. Cue the Rea Sermmurd I don’t got no type. ) The narrator says at one point, what was sex, but newness? It’s a good idea, sex IS newness—but I argue, good sex.. is COMMUNICATION. In this book though… it was not. with the exception of Diane, all sex was just next. Next. Next. I get that too, not all sex is, by virtue of being sex, automatically exciting, but there is such a KALEIDOSCOPE of sex experiences that could've been described, that I kept waiting for!! But Paul consistently had ONE type of encounter:
Curt, sloppy,—often icky. Not the good icky. (at one point a partner is described as shooting ‘yellowish mucus’ into Paul’s mouth. …….. …..they both seemed unperturbed. ..........*ahem*.
Precisely because these connections seemed so… impersonal, bordering on the unappealing, I had no clue or insight as to what motivates him to seek out his 29992349309th encounter. Paul wasn't insecure or super needing validation; the sex seemed unsatisfying, he wasn't in it for the money. So then, why? Which circles right back to the characters lacking volume and a general lack of psychological tension...
In the end: AITA? for not loving this book, when a lot of people loved (or will) love it? Maybe i'm just a grinch? Maybe--the more time passed though, the more I kept thinking, this story could have been so much more... the author had the language, the background and the good premise to say something interesting and true about sex and gender (and about trans identities), ---I kept reading and hoping, but while the book was undoubtedly clever, like the characters, the writing seemed afraid to step out of its role of Relevant, Hip Queer Takes.
I finished it, feeling like I might after one of the myriad x encounters described: talking about it was more fun than doing it.
Acid Covers Rant Playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-efIj...
Diane Mix Side A tape Playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list...
June 10, 2025
So many fantastic one-liners in this hilarious and hard hitting shapeshifting queer as fuck novel. Unapologetically THE dyke-fag book of all time
April 10, 2025
I thought this book was going to be some kind of whimsical, beautiful and sensual look at a man named Paul who is able to shape shift into a woman at will, and would maybe relay the beauty of sexual experiences, life experiences and queer experiences as a male-female gender flipping person.
(And maybe would offer an explanation as to why Paul has this ability?)
BUT A-FUCKING-LAS my friends...........
How insanely wrong I was (so far anyway, because admittedly i've decided to dnf after 1 month and 3 days of putting myself through this painful shit, because the idea of picking this book up has been literally making me wanna quit reading forever)
This book is pretentious as fuck and made me feel like I was on the outside of a joke that the whole world knew.
The RELENTLESS fucking name dropping 🙄 of artists, musicians, societal figures and very hipster-ish queer culture references that are possibly only relevant/interesting to an american queer culture from the 1990's was so tiringly boring.
THE BOOK STARTED TO LOSE ME and my interest when Paul shapeshifted/changed the size of his dick, making it horridly small and then proceeded to giggle at it while fucking someone, and thinking an inner monologue about how it looked like a tater tot..........
(sounds wildly hilarious, I know this, but in the vibe/context of the book it was so fucking bizarre and made my skin itchy with discomfort)
BUT THE BOOK COMPLETELY LOST ME after Paul unwillingly gives a blowjob to a gross man in a DISGUUUUSTING alleyway outside a nightclub, where he puts his hand in a slimy puddle and sucks the guy off anyway until he cums in Pauls mouth/face.............. AND THIS IS THE FUCKING LINE IT ENDS WITH:
"Dave squirted yellowish mucus onto Pauls mouth and chin"
JAIL.
JAIL RN.
No $200 for you, ya absolutely bellygrub.
Not only did he "squirted" it.
IT'S YELLOW FUCKING MUCUS 🤢
🤢 🤢 🤢🤢🤢
🤢🤢 🤢 🤢 🤢
🤢 🤢 🤢 🤢 🤢
🤢 🤢 🤢 🤢 🤢
🤢 🤢 🤢 🤢 🤢
🤢 🤢 🤢 🤢 🤢
🤢 🤢🤢 🤢🤢
Uhhhhhhhh Dave needs a fucking doctor my dude, and a drink of water or 7.
Fuck this shit, I'm out xoxo
(And maybe would offer an explanation as to why Paul has this ability?)
BUT A-FUCKING-LAS my friends...........
How insanely wrong I was (so far anyway, because admittedly i've decided to dnf after 1 month and 3 days of putting myself through this painful shit, because the idea of picking this book up has been literally making me wanna quit reading forever)
This book is pretentious as fuck and made me feel like I was on the outside of a joke that the whole world knew.
The RELENTLESS fucking name dropping 🙄 of artists, musicians, societal figures and very hipster-ish queer culture references that are possibly only relevant/interesting to an american queer culture from the 1990's was so tiringly boring.
THE BOOK STARTED TO LOSE ME and my interest when Paul shapeshifted/changed the size of his dick, making it horridly small and then proceeded to giggle at it while fucking someone, and thinking an inner monologue about how it looked like a tater tot..........
(sounds wildly hilarious, I know this, but in the vibe/context of the book it was so fucking bizarre and made my skin itchy with discomfort)
BUT THE BOOK COMPLETELY LOST ME after Paul unwillingly gives a blowjob to a gross man in a DISGUUUUSTING alleyway outside a nightclub, where he puts his hand in a slimy puddle and sucks the guy off anyway until he cums in Pauls mouth/face.............. AND THIS IS THE FUCKING LINE IT ENDS WITH:
"Dave squirted yellowish mucus onto Pauls mouth and chin"
JAIL.
JAIL RN.
No $200 for you, ya absolutely bellygrub.
Not only did he "squirted" it.
IT'S YELLOW FUCKING MUCUS 🤢
🤢 🤢 🤢🤢🤢
🤢🤢 🤢 🤢 🤢
🤢 🤢 🤢 🤢 🤢
🤢 🤢 🤢 🤢 🤢
🤢 🤢 🤢 🤢 🤢
🤢 🤢 🤢 🤢 🤢
🤢 🤢🤢 🤢🤢
Uhhhhhhhh Dave needs a fucking doctor my dude, and a drink of water or 7.
Fuck this shit, I'm out xoxo
January 11, 2024
There was so much here to like - the amazing writing, the fantastic sense of time and place, and the unique and fascinating character that is Paul, one of the best narrators I've come across in a long, long time - but, unfortunately, the fact that this had no plot whatsoever completely scuppered this book's chances at greatness. Now, I don't mean that this book needed a plot in the traditional sense of the word - I actually rather liked the fact that this was, above all, about Paul's day to day life and travels - but it did, desperately, need trajectory. The whole book I figured that we would be going somewhere, that Paul, at some point or other would be forced to change or grow. Robin was the obvious turning point for him: finding someone else who was a shapeshifter could have been a very revelatory thing. However, instead of a potential heart to heart between the only two shapeshifters in the book, all we get is Paul eye-balling Robin's clothes and wishing he was cool enough to impress him. Which...really? That's it? I'm not saying there needed to be a showdown or anything - hell, I'm not even saying that Paul needed to have something very meaningful happen with Robin - just that there should have been something at the end of this book that served as a culmination, a sense of an arc. Because the very last line of the last chapter could have served to end any chapter. Paul loved all the places he lived in; he saw all of them as representative of himself. We already knew that so...what was the point of the story?
I would have been fine with anything, honestly. But the further I got in the book and the more I realized that wasn't coming the less I enjoyed it. It's a damn shame for such a unique and creative book to have such a pointless problem. I suppose I'd still recommend it, if only for the wildness factor, but it'd be with clear reservations.
I would have been fine with anything, honestly. But the further I got in the book and the more I realized that wasn't coming the less I enjoyed it. It's a damn shame for such a unique and creative book to have such a pointless problem. I suppose I'd still recommend it, if only for the wildness factor, but it'd be with clear reservations.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 1, 2019
I'm between 3.5 and 4 stars.
Sometimes I find myself lamenting that there are very few original stories out there anymore, that too many books seem too similar to one another. And then I read a book like Andrea Lawlor's Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl , and that lamentation flies out the window.
Holy crap.
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is sexy, crazy, confusing, bizarre, funny, and one of the most utterly creative stories I've read in a really long time. I'm not sure if I understand what Lawlor was trying to say but they took me on one hell of a journey with this book.
Paul is a young, handsome gay man living in Iowa City in the mid-1990s. He's smart, well-read, friendly, and has mastered the art of winning the attention of those he's attracted to. Not a day goes by when Paul doesn't have an encounter with someone he meets, someone he knows, or someone he barely acknowledges, beyond the simple act of sex.
"He was glad to be a known homosexual—it allowed him a daring way with girls."
The thing is, Paul isn't just any young man—he's a shapeshifter. He can transform himself physically between male and female based on his whims. All he needs to do is concentrate and his body changes—parts grow and disappear, his hair grows and recedes. (My sister had a Skipper doll that "grew up" when you turned her arm, and I kept thinking about that when I read this.)
With a wardrobe change he can quickly go from preppy college student to butch lesbian or leather boy, and no one ever suspects his authenticity. (He just can't lose focus, or things might slide back to his "normal" male self.)
Only one person knows his secret, his best friend Jane. When the two travel to a womyn's music festival, Jane and Polly (Paul's alter ego) are ready for two weeks of fun and unbridled sex, and he looks forward to embodying this role for an extended period of time. Yet Paul is unprepared to fall in love, and is definitely unprepared for the crazy set of events that occur next.
I knew next to nothing about this book, and I think part of its appeal lies in the element of surprise, that the plot unfolds without the reader having much expectation about what's to come. The plot is essentially divided into thirds, and I found the first and third sections more interesting than the middle. Lawlor is a great storyteller, and they really did a terrific job with place and time, truly evoking the feel of the 1990s.
This book is definitely not for everyone, but if you're willing to give it a shot, you'll probably be charmed by Paul as well. He's completely imperfect, he's mean to those who care most about him, but he keeps you drawn to him like a moth to a flame.
See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com.
Check out my list of the best books I read in 2018 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2018.html.
You can follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/the.bookishworld.of.yrralh/.
Sometimes I find myself lamenting that there are very few original stories out there anymore, that too many books seem too similar to one another. And then I read a book like Andrea Lawlor's Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl , and that lamentation flies out the window.
Holy crap.
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is sexy, crazy, confusing, bizarre, funny, and one of the most utterly creative stories I've read in a really long time. I'm not sure if I understand what Lawlor was trying to say but they took me on one hell of a journey with this book.
Paul is a young, handsome gay man living in Iowa City in the mid-1990s. He's smart, well-read, friendly, and has mastered the art of winning the attention of those he's attracted to. Not a day goes by when Paul doesn't have an encounter with someone he meets, someone he knows, or someone he barely acknowledges, beyond the simple act of sex.
"He was glad to be a known homosexual—it allowed him a daring way with girls."
The thing is, Paul isn't just any young man—he's a shapeshifter. He can transform himself physically between male and female based on his whims. All he needs to do is concentrate and his body changes—parts grow and disappear, his hair grows and recedes. (My sister had a Skipper doll that "grew up" when you turned her arm, and I kept thinking about that when I read this.)
With a wardrobe change he can quickly go from preppy college student to butch lesbian or leather boy, and no one ever suspects his authenticity. (He just can't lose focus, or things might slide back to his "normal" male self.)
Only one person knows his secret, his best friend Jane. When the two travel to a womyn's music festival, Jane and Polly (Paul's alter ego) are ready for two weeks of fun and unbridled sex, and he looks forward to embodying this role for an extended period of time. Yet Paul is unprepared to fall in love, and is definitely unprepared for the crazy set of events that occur next.
I knew next to nothing about this book, and I think part of its appeal lies in the element of surprise, that the plot unfolds without the reader having much expectation about what's to come. The plot is essentially divided into thirds, and I found the first and third sections more interesting than the middle. Lawlor is a great storyteller, and they really did a terrific job with place and time, truly evoking the feel of the 1990s.
This book is definitely not for everyone, but if you're willing to give it a shot, you'll probably be charmed by Paul as well. He's completely imperfect, he's mean to those who care most about him, but he keeps you drawn to him like a moth to a flame.
See all of my reviews at itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com.
Check out my list of the best books I read in 2018 at https://itseithersadnessoreuphoria.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-best-books-i-read-in-2018.html.
You can follow me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/the.bookishworld.of.yrralh/.
April 18, 2019
It's the early 90s, and Paul is a student and bartender immersed in the queer subculture of Iowa City. Paul is also a shapeshifter. He can switch genders (though he almost always thinks of himself as him); can make himself taller/shorter, more masculine/feminine, etc., at will.
Paul's story is an emotionally immersive journey. The first third of the book is relentlessly, almost exhaustingly, sexual, with Paul jumping continually between liaisons with both men and women, as both a man and a woman. Paul is an embodiment of sex: Lawlor says 'Paul is sex'; his character makes more sense seen this way. The reader never loses the sense that Paul's next encounter is no more than a few pages away, and the effect is a constant low-level arousal, a tense feeling of erotic anticipation that mirrors Paul's experience.
This is a breathless introduction, moving swiftly from the start, giving you no time to orientate yourself, and as a result you'll be either pulled irresistibly into the book's flow or thrown out straight away. I found it exhilarating: I picked it up and read 100 pages in one gulp, and I knew I had to find out what would become of Paul.
In the middle third, however, the mood changes drastically. As a woman (known to others as Polly), Paul falls in love with Diane. He moves across states to be with her in Massachusetts. The pace slows; frustration enters the picture. Paul struggles with the inability to shift out of his female form, with hiding his true nature from Diane. Having been accustomed to changing himself according to his own whims, Paul is now faced with the difficulties of compromising oneself for the sake of a relationship – for example, his reluctant adoption of Diane's veganism.
The final third shifts again. It is neither a return to the brisk excitement of the early chapters, nor a resolution of any sort. There is a sense of greater maturity. There is also a sense of fantastical mystery when Paul identifies a fellow shapeshifter, a person known for most of the story as simply 'the youth'. Yet I find it hard to really feel that Paul Takes the Form can be categorised as fantasy. Lawlor is interested in how these fantasy elements touch the characters' lives and relationships, not the nature of the abilities themselves. Thus their mechanics, and how they fit into the wider world of the novel, remain obscure. (Diane too seems to have a preternatural ability – a way of talking to animals – but whether this is magic or intuition, we never find out.)
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a fluid narrative that resists conclusions, ending on a note of freedom and hope. In other words, its style and form entirely suit its central character. I loved it for both its lively portrait of 90s counterculture and its chameleon-like, eminently loveable protagonist.
I received an advance review copy of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl from the publisher through NetGalley.
TinyLetter | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr
Paul's story is an emotionally immersive journey. The first third of the book is relentlessly, almost exhaustingly, sexual, with Paul jumping continually between liaisons with both men and women, as both a man and a woman. Paul is an embodiment of sex: Lawlor says 'Paul is sex'; his character makes more sense seen this way. The reader never loses the sense that Paul's next encounter is no more than a few pages away, and the effect is a constant low-level arousal, a tense feeling of erotic anticipation that mirrors Paul's experience.
This is a breathless introduction, moving swiftly from the start, giving you no time to orientate yourself, and as a result you'll be either pulled irresistibly into the book's flow or thrown out straight away. I found it exhilarating: I picked it up and read 100 pages in one gulp, and I knew I had to find out what would become of Paul.
In the middle third, however, the mood changes drastically. As a woman (known to others as Polly), Paul falls in love with Diane. He moves across states to be with her in Massachusetts. The pace slows; frustration enters the picture. Paul struggles with the inability to shift out of his female form, with hiding his true nature from Diane. Having been accustomed to changing himself according to his own whims, Paul is now faced with the difficulties of compromising oneself for the sake of a relationship – for example, his reluctant adoption of Diane's veganism.
The final third shifts again. It is neither a return to the brisk excitement of the early chapters, nor a resolution of any sort. There is a sense of greater maturity. There is also a sense of fantastical mystery when Paul identifies a fellow shapeshifter, a person known for most of the story as simply 'the youth'. Yet I find it hard to really feel that Paul Takes the Form can be categorised as fantasy. Lawlor is interested in how these fantasy elements touch the characters' lives and relationships, not the nature of the abilities themselves. Thus their mechanics, and how they fit into the wider world of the novel, remain obscure. (Diane too seems to have a preternatural ability – a way of talking to animals – but whether this is magic or intuition, we never find out.)
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a fluid narrative that resists conclusions, ending on a note of freedom and hope. In other words, its style and form entirely suit its central character. I loved it for both its lively portrait of 90s counterculture and its chameleon-like, eminently loveable protagonist.
I received an advance review copy of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl from the publisher through NetGalley.
TinyLetter | Twitter | Instagram | Tumblr
March 25, 2018
Holy shit. I read this in one giant gulp. Partway through a friend dropped by unexpectedly, and there I was standing in the hallway unable to speak coherently. She took one look at me and said, “whatever that book is, go back to it. It’s ok. I’ll see you later.” So I lay back down on the sofa, day turned to night and I did not do anything else until I’d finished it.
The funny thing is, it was one of those books where you’re unwillingly seduced. You’re thinking, huh, it’s good but maybe too dense or maybe too whatever and I’ll DNF in just a few minutes. But then page 60 or so, I was well hooked and then it didn’t let up for an instant.
Yeah, part of the charm is recognition. 1993, 1994. College towns, NYC, Provincetown, SF. The music, the clothing, the ways we were. It’s like seeing inside the life of that intimidatingly cool guy or gal who used to work at the indie bookstore back when you were just barely adulting.
It’s very much a love letter to those people, places, bars and times, especially SF.
And how can you not love a hero who can change, like Orlando, into different genders on whim? Partly anti-hero in this case, very much imperfect. Crappy to his birth family and oldest friends. Irresponsible, lazy, maneuvering. But also brave, funny, interesting, earnest and sweet.
I’m going to get up, eat dinner only 4 hours late, and enjoy the pleasant post-book haze of this read like a drug. Highly recommended.
The funny thing is, it was one of those books where you’re unwillingly seduced. You’re thinking, huh, it’s good but maybe too dense or maybe too whatever and I’ll DNF in just a few minutes. But then page 60 or so, I was well hooked and then it didn’t let up for an instant.
Yeah, part of the charm is recognition. 1993, 1994. College towns, NYC, Provincetown, SF. The music, the clothing, the ways we were. It’s like seeing inside the life of that intimidatingly cool guy or gal who used to work at the indie bookstore back when you were just barely adulting.
It’s very much a love letter to those people, places, bars and times, especially SF.
And how can you not love a hero who can change, like Orlando, into different genders on whim? Partly anti-hero in this case, very much imperfect. Crappy to his birth family and oldest friends. Irresponsible, lazy, maneuvering. But also brave, funny, interesting, earnest and sweet.
I’m going to get up, eat dinner only 4 hours late, and enjoy the pleasant post-book haze of this read like a drug. Highly recommended.
June 16, 2022
reallyyyy in my niche i adored it
April 20, 2025
3.5 i thought it was really dull and too long IM SORRY. i can’t handle plotless / character focused for 330 pages if there’s no character arc . like what are we doing
November 2, 2020
Okay first things first, I had to read “cum” in a book published in 2017 that wasn’t bad erotica????? Do we have to bring back cum vs come discourse?????
I wanted to like this book and veryyyyyy much did not. Paul was shallow, self-absorbed, and very judgmental but never in a fun way. In a very boring way. If he were shallow and judgmental but fun and interesting? I would have been more into that! He was not. His perspective was so full of stereotypes and shallow judgments on the people around him and his shallow relationships with them. I kept waiting for Paul to move past this but he never did. Toward the end, he became moderately more self-aware of it but he never changed, really. There’s this self consciousness in everything Paul does that he never grows out of. He is always performing for some unseen, highly judgmental voyeur. Perhaps, in a way, he is imagining someone judging him the way he judges others. A lot of his stereotypical judgments, especially about lesbians, that were already unpleasant to read became much more unpleasant the more it dawned on me that Paul was never going to change and he was never going to have a moment of self-reflection on the rigid categories he put others and himself in.
Whether it was merely the strength of Paul’s perspective or not, PTTFOAMG and the narrative suffer from this same judgmental, ironic detachment. Like Paul, I felt like the book thought itself smart and clever for being afraid of being earnest or sincere at any point. Everything had to be presented and seen through a veil of irony so we could all know just how quippy and on point the commentary was. Maybe I'm just not familiar enough with the 90s gay scene and would have been appropriately awed if I were but I doubt it. Because the narrative never allowed any of the characters vulnerability without immediately poking fun at them, all the characters including Paul lacked dimension. The whole book just felt so shallow.
This is also how I felt about all the sex in the book, of which there was a LOT and absolutely none of it was sexy. Like, I wasn’t looking to get off to this book, but a surprisingly large portion of it is sex and all of it was just plain boring and not fun to read about when it wasn’t actively off-putting.
PTTFOAMG’s take on gender is still one I’m trying to puzzle out, but for all the people calling it forward-thinking and progressive, I found it fairly regressive. Paul seems really stuck throughout the book between wanting to be a gay man or a lesbian woman, but there never really is an acknowledgement of the vast middle ground between those identities for both sexuality and gender. He opens the book saying he’s bisexual but never really seems to identify that way, going between gay man and lesbian woman depending on his physical body at the time.
And that really is my biggest critique of the book: it’s so focused on how shapeshifting would inform a fictional character’s gender that it doesn’t stop to think about what that metaphor is saying about gender in the real world, where nonbinary and trans people can’t just shapeshift.
The entire book is really focused on gender as something that any discerning queer can tell based on physical appearance and one’s body. Maybe straight people can’t tell whether someone’s a man or a woman (and those are the choices the book gives), but a queer can. At the very least, Paul can. Paul has some very reductive takes on gender and its link to appearance and the body that I frankly think could have been interesting if the book delved into deconstructing them instead of just propping them up.
Gender in the book is very linked to the body, if not necessarily innately linked. Other trans people's identities are respected, at least by Paul, but the only other non-shapeshifter trans character is Franky, someone Paul says he never would have known was trans if he didn’t hear gossip about it and who is post-transition. There are never any characters who challenge Paul’s immediate gender categorization, and he makes a point of gendering every single person he sees and meets. The narrative never sought to challenge any of this or any of Paul's first impressions and judgments. PTTFOAMG never really contends with the metaphor of shapeshifting as transition either, and that while Paul can go back and forth, the rest of us cannot. Besides Franky and Robin, there are no other trans characters in PTTFOAMG, and certainly none in transition, which I find to be a real oversight. If we are to interpret both Paul and Robin as nonbinary, and I do, I think it would have been more interesting to have a nonbinary character who isn't a shapeshifter as a foil for Paul than one who is.
Throughout most of the book rather than feeling like a representation of being nonbinary, the shapeshifting metaphor seems to liken Paul’s experiences more to those of binary trans people at different points of transition. I thought it was interesting once he got to the lesbian retreat and began wanting to be a woman in a more concrete way than just wanting a pussy and breasts. It was a lot more interesting than him just wanting to fuck a lesbian rocker, especially his conflict with passing and how long he can stay in his Polly form, but admittedly even those chapters were really based in stereotypes.
His conflict with Diane over his gender and the way he never feels like enough of a woman to be involved with her or in the lesbian community is actually one of the most interesting in the book on an individual level, but in a book with wildly uncharitable opinions on just about every group of queer people, its derision of lesbians was especially uhhh egregious to me. The book felt very, very close to calling lesbians TERFs and that really rubbed me the wrong way.
As a note, I’ve seen a couple reviews where people condemn Paul for not disclosing his entire gender/physical history to everyone he fucks, and the thing is that’s a real issue that trans people face lol. Trans people who can’t shapeshift have to think about these things; every time they fuck someone they don’t know or even someone they do who doesn’t know they’re trans, they have to weigh that disclosure against their own safety. The fact that this is an issue in the reviews is kind of funny though because PTTFOAMG never attempts to contend with any of this. The closest it gets is when Paul seduces a straight man who he briefly says would probably punch him if he knew about him. It comes back to my biggest complaint about this book: it never seems to think about what the shapeshifting is actually saying as a metaphor or what purpose it serves.
Paul makes some moves toward a more genderfluid internal identity but I felt any realization of that sort was cut off by the abrupt ending. I wasn’t involved in the gay scene in the early 90s because I wasn’t even born yet, but regardless of whether terms like nonbinary and they/them pronouns were available at the time, this is a book published in 2017. Paul didn’t have to end the book saying “I’m nonbinary” for him to articulate he’s not on either side of the binary. Instead, he goes back and forth between Paul and Polly and never really lands anywhere significant.
Overall, I felt PTTFOAMG was a careless, shallow book, which would honestly be fine if it weren’t convinced of its own brilliance and being marketed to me as the cleverest, queerest, wokest book ever written. Wildly disappointing.
I wanted to like this book and veryyyyyy much did not. Paul was shallow, self-absorbed, and very judgmental but never in a fun way. In a very boring way. If he were shallow and judgmental but fun and interesting? I would have been more into that! He was not. His perspective was so full of stereotypes and shallow judgments on the people around him and his shallow relationships with them. I kept waiting for Paul to move past this but he never did. Toward the end, he became moderately more self-aware of it but he never changed, really. There’s this self consciousness in everything Paul does that he never grows out of. He is always performing for some unseen, highly judgmental voyeur. Perhaps, in a way, he is imagining someone judging him the way he judges others. A lot of his stereotypical judgments, especially about lesbians, that were already unpleasant to read became much more unpleasant the more it dawned on me that Paul was never going to change and he was never going to have a moment of self-reflection on the rigid categories he put others and himself in.
Whether it was merely the strength of Paul’s perspective or not, PTTFOAMG and the narrative suffer from this same judgmental, ironic detachment. Like Paul, I felt like the book thought itself smart and clever for being afraid of being earnest or sincere at any point. Everything had to be presented and seen through a veil of irony so we could all know just how quippy and on point the commentary was. Maybe I'm just not familiar enough with the 90s gay scene and would have been appropriately awed if I were but I doubt it. Because the narrative never allowed any of the characters vulnerability without immediately poking fun at them, all the characters including Paul lacked dimension. The whole book just felt so shallow.
This is also how I felt about all the sex in the book, of which there was a LOT and absolutely none of it was sexy. Like, I wasn’t looking to get off to this book, but a surprisingly large portion of it is sex and all of it was just plain boring and not fun to read about when it wasn’t actively off-putting.
PTTFOAMG’s take on gender is still one I’m trying to puzzle out, but for all the people calling it forward-thinking and progressive, I found it fairly regressive. Paul seems really stuck throughout the book between wanting to be a gay man or a lesbian woman, but there never really is an acknowledgement of the vast middle ground between those identities for both sexuality and gender. He opens the book saying he’s bisexual but never really seems to identify that way, going between gay man and lesbian woman depending on his physical body at the time.
And that really is my biggest critique of the book: it’s so focused on how shapeshifting would inform a fictional character’s gender that it doesn’t stop to think about what that metaphor is saying about gender in the real world, where nonbinary and trans people can’t just shapeshift.
The entire book is really focused on gender as something that any discerning queer can tell based on physical appearance and one’s body. Maybe straight people can’t tell whether someone’s a man or a woman (and those are the choices the book gives), but a queer can. At the very least, Paul can. Paul has some very reductive takes on gender and its link to appearance and the body that I frankly think could have been interesting if the book delved into deconstructing them instead of just propping them up.
Gender in the book is very linked to the body, if not necessarily innately linked. Other trans people's identities are respected, at least by Paul, but the only other non-shapeshifter trans character is Franky, someone Paul says he never would have known was trans if he didn’t hear gossip about it and who is post-transition. There are never any characters who challenge Paul’s immediate gender categorization, and he makes a point of gendering every single person he sees and meets. The narrative never sought to challenge any of this or any of Paul's first impressions and judgments. PTTFOAMG never really contends with the metaphor of shapeshifting as transition either, and that while Paul can go back and forth, the rest of us cannot. Besides Franky and Robin, there are no other trans characters in PTTFOAMG, and certainly none in transition, which I find to be a real oversight. If we are to interpret both Paul and Robin as nonbinary, and I do, I think it would have been more interesting to have a nonbinary character who isn't a shapeshifter as a foil for Paul than one who is.
Throughout most of the book rather than feeling like a representation of being nonbinary, the shapeshifting metaphor seems to liken Paul’s experiences more to those of binary trans people at different points of transition. I thought it was interesting once he got to the lesbian retreat and began wanting to be a woman in a more concrete way than just wanting a pussy and breasts. It was a lot more interesting than him just wanting to fuck a lesbian rocker, especially his conflict with passing and how long he can stay in his Polly form, but admittedly even those chapters were really based in stereotypes.
His conflict with Diane over his gender and the way he never feels like enough of a woman to be involved with her or in the lesbian community is actually one of the most interesting in the book on an individual level, but in a book with wildly uncharitable opinions on just about every group of queer people, its derision of lesbians was especially uhhh egregious to me. The book felt very, very close to calling lesbians TERFs and that really rubbed me the wrong way.
As a note, I’ve seen a couple reviews where people condemn Paul for not disclosing his entire gender/physical history to everyone he fucks, and the thing is that’s a real issue that trans people face lol. Trans people who can’t shapeshift have to think about these things; every time they fuck someone they don’t know or even someone they do who doesn’t know they’re trans, they have to weigh that disclosure against their own safety. The fact that this is an issue in the reviews is kind of funny though because PTTFOAMG never attempts to contend with any of this. The closest it gets is when Paul seduces a straight man who he briefly says would probably punch him if he knew about him. It comes back to my biggest complaint about this book: it never seems to think about what the shapeshifting is actually saying as a metaphor or what purpose it serves.
Paul makes some moves toward a more genderfluid internal identity but I felt any realization of that sort was cut off by the abrupt ending. I wasn’t involved in the gay scene in the early 90s because I wasn’t even born yet, but regardless of whether terms like nonbinary and they/them pronouns were available at the time, this is a book published in 2017. Paul didn’t have to end the book saying “I’m nonbinary” for him to articulate he’s not on either side of the binary. Instead, he goes back and forth between Paul and Polly and never really lands anywhere significant.
Overall, I felt PTTFOAMG was a careless, shallow book, which would honestly be fine if it weren’t convinced of its own brilliance and being marketed to me as the cleverest, queerest, wokest book ever written. Wildly disappointing.
September 3, 2019
This novel reminded me of two other contemporary novels, Black Wave by Michelle Tea (who blurbed this novel) and Heartland by Ana Simo, because all three challenged me in the same way.
All three are written in a careful-breezy style--by that I mean, the writing is quite careful, and in many instances beautiful and poetic, but the voice is crafted to give the impression of near-artlessness.
All three are also about social relationships that aren't within the heteronormative and/or cisgender experience, and as such they occupy a space where relatively few novels live, as yet. Authors writing about the cis-het experience can employ all kinds of shorthand in their writing, it seems to me, because readers are already trained to the 'beats' of cis-het relationships in fiction. When almost every novel you've ever read is about cis/het people, then you develop, as a reader, the experience to anticipate almost every possible outcome in relationships between characters. Because the authors of these three novels are interested in exploring non-normative relationships and characters, though, their novels have a lacy quality to me, where I can't see the pattern in relationships from the beginning, and where I have no expectation of what's going to happen next. I was a little lost, fictionally-speaking. It was kind of wonderful.
Just now this novel is my favorite of the three. I thought it was the best written and the most daring. I recommend all three of them though.
All three are written in a careful-breezy style--by that I mean, the writing is quite careful, and in many instances beautiful and poetic, but the voice is crafted to give the impression of near-artlessness.
All three are also about social relationships that aren't within the heteronormative and/or cisgender experience, and as such they occupy a space where relatively few novels live, as yet. Authors writing about the cis-het experience can employ all kinds of shorthand in their writing, it seems to me, because readers are already trained to the 'beats' of cis-het relationships in fiction. When almost every novel you've ever read is about cis/het people, then you develop, as a reader, the experience to anticipate almost every possible outcome in relationships between characters. Because the authors of these three novels are interested in exploring non-normative relationships and characters, though, their novels have a lacy quality to me, where I can't see the pattern in relationships from the beginning, and where I have no expectation of what's going to happen next. I was a little lost, fictionally-speaking. It was kind of wonderful.
Just now this novel is my favorite of the three. I thought it was the best written and the most daring. I recommend all three of them though.
November 28, 2017
I loved, loved, loved this novel. A nostalgic trip back to the queer 90s wrapped up in a speculative temporal-space odyssey that inspires a meditation on gender, sex, identity, home, atmosphere, place, and love. Because what else is there?
I got to read the manuscript and can't wait to read it once it's published in November!
I got to read the manuscript and can't wait to read it once it's published in November!
July 31, 2019
I hated the first two thirds of this book but somehow felt compelled to keep reading and I'm genuinely glad I did; the last third of the novel was actually enjoyable!
PTTFOAMG frustrated me in a lot of ways. It was all tell, no show. Like Paul, this book was way too often annoyingly pleased with its cleverness when I didn't think it'd earned it. Much of the Paul/Polly stuff in the first two sections reinforced reductive gender stereotypes in really boring ways...which is even more irritating because I feel like this book thinks it's doing the opposite.
I don't mind sex being part of a novel but the descriptions of Paul's encounters and one track mind grew incredibly thin very early on. This was disappointing and mind boggling because the magical realist elements here were SO intriguing and I feel like this sort of shock value usually just speaks to a lack of creatively that I don't think was an issue here. I was deeply troubled by Paul continually referring to his sexual interests as "prey," and himself as "hunting" them. Maybe part of this is because I know predatory men like Paul who take advantage of unsuspecting women in LGBT spaces.
That said, Paul became a lot more compelling in the San Francisco portion at the end. He seemed like a REAL person who'd finally broken free of some of his empty shallowness. Part of my appreciation here may be due to Robin's presence; finally getting to meet this character who we'd seen from afar in earlier chapters was incredibly rewarding.
Despite often being annoyed with this book, I was occasionally taken aback by beautiful snips of prose. The folklore chapters were a wonderful and inventive insertion.
Instead of seeing so much of Paul as a "hunter" seeking sexual conquests, I wish we'd gotten to further explore his shapeshifting abilities. Diane's supernatural plot line also didn't get its due--it had such potential but ultimately went nowhere and seemed so wasted. In a book full of one dimensional characters Diane especially seemed like a cardboard cut-out.
3/5 for the San Fran segment; 1/5 for the first two.
PTTFOAMG frustrated me in a lot of ways. It was all tell, no show. Like Paul, this book was way too often annoyingly pleased with its cleverness when I didn't think it'd earned it. Much of the Paul/Polly stuff in the first two sections reinforced reductive gender stereotypes in really boring ways...which is even more irritating because I feel like this book thinks it's doing the opposite.
I don't mind sex being part of a novel but the descriptions of Paul's encounters and one track mind grew incredibly thin very early on. This was disappointing and mind boggling because the magical realist elements here were SO intriguing and I feel like this sort of shock value usually just speaks to a lack of creatively that I don't think was an issue here. I was deeply troubled by Paul continually referring to his sexual interests as "prey," and himself as "hunting" them. Maybe part of this is because I know predatory men like Paul who take advantage of unsuspecting women in LGBT spaces.
That said, Paul became a lot more compelling in the San Francisco portion at the end. He seemed like a REAL person who'd finally broken free of some of his empty shallowness. Part of my appreciation here may be due to Robin's presence; finally getting to meet this character who we'd seen from afar in earlier chapters was incredibly rewarding.
Despite often being annoyed with this book, I was occasionally taken aback by beautiful snips of prose. The folklore chapters were a wonderful and inventive insertion.
Instead of seeing so much of Paul as a "hunter" seeking sexual conquests, I wish we'd gotten to further explore his shapeshifting abilities. Diane's supernatural plot line also didn't get its due--it had such potential but ultimately went nowhere and seemed so wasted. In a book full of one dimensional characters Diane especially seemed like a cardboard cut-out.
3/5 for the San Fran segment; 1/5 for the first two.
August 27, 2019
fucking great.
September 9, 2019
This book is such a perfect capture of various lgbtq+ communities in the United States in the 80s & 90s that I'd recommend it for that aspect alone. But the main character, who has the ability to shapeshift gender to move more easily within these spaces, really makes for a unique read. It's so hard to believe this is a debut novel because it feels so elegantly written (often about not so elegant topics!) I laughed a lot especially at the beginning.
This book came out 23 April 2019, but I did recently acquire a review copy through NetGalley from the publisher because it was available still AND one of my Goodreads groups was having a fascinating discussion of it and I felt left out.
This book came out 23 April 2019, but I did recently acquire a review copy through NetGalley from the publisher because it was available still AND one of my Goodreads groups was having a fascinating discussion of it and I felt left out.
August 8, 2019
This book is described a lot as a sort of Gen X take on Virginia Woolf's Orlando, which is not entirely untrue, but I think it's more than that. Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl captures the feeling of an era obsessed with shifting, ambiguous sexual and gender politics. A hit of nostalgia for those who lived it and a necessary bit of insight for those too young to remember. The book is a mix-tape - quite literally laying out what all the good music was for those who weren't there - gifted from one generation to the next. It is also probably the horniest book I've read in years.
March 27, 2020
I think this might be the QUEEREST book I have ever read!! At some point in the first chapter I thought to myself "A straight person could never have written this," and I was delighted. Set in 1993, it starts in Iowa City where Paul is half-heartedly working on a film degree. Most though he is bartending, dressing up, flirting, and constantly on the prowl for potential conquests. One day he decides he want to try lesbian sex and so grows breasts, transforms his dick into a vagina, and goes to see a touring girl band from Seattle playing at a local club. It turns out Paul has had the ability to transform himself since childhood- in fact, for a while he thought all queer people could do it. He doesn't know why he has this ability or if he is the only one who has it. But he isn't greatly concerned. Lesbian sex is good; he decides to try his luck at the Michigan Women's Music festival, which he road trips to with his best friend Jane. Thus begins a wandering, whimsical journey into various queer subcultures from Provincetown to Chicago to San Francisco. The book is deeply rooted it it's time period; the specter of AIDs haunting the edged of every community, and constant references to the music of the era on a mix of CDs and cassette mix tapes. This book was a strange delight, I definitely recommend it.
November 1, 2019
I think this is now the third transgender novel I have read in 2019, which is a great sign that gay fiction is developing beyond the traditional coming-out, HIV-Aids, or romance tropes. Not that these aren’t important, but the quotation that “there are more things in heaven and Earth … than are dreamt of in your philosophy” does spring to mind.
Also, gay and gender politics are a veritable minefield today. So, if one wants to know what a ‘lived’ experience is for a transgender person, for example, probably the most authentic approach is through fiction.
Interestingly, the Riot Press website describes the novel as “a speculative history of early 1990s identity politics during the heyday of ACT UP and Queer Nation.” While accurate, this is a rather dry description of Lawlor’s bawdy, irreverent, downright filthy, sweetly nostalgic and wonderfully lived-in novel.
I am unsure if the fact that Paul/Polly is technically a shapeshifter is a kind of cop-out when it comes to gender, but in the end, I think it works as a rather inventive device to look at either side of the fence, as it were.
What is also interesting is that while, superficially, the book is about sex – there are a lot of very graphic scenes – it ultimately morphs into a sophisticated debate about intimacy, especially when Diane enters the picture. Kirkus Reviews hits the nail on the head:
Eventually Paul has to decide on the level of intimacy he desires; specifically, who he wants to tell about his body. This suggests that intimacy is knowledge of an identity that transcends the corporeal form.
To be honest, it took me a long while to finish the book, as the gender-swopping and free-swinging sex scenes took me far out of my comfort zone. But that is probably a generational thing, as any gay millennial is unlikely to even bat an eyelid reading this. In the end, Paul/Polly’s journey of self-discovery is so heartfelt and true that the reader cannot help but be swept up into the story, especially the bittersweet ending.
Also, gay and gender politics are a veritable minefield today. So, if one wants to know what a ‘lived’ experience is for a transgender person, for example, probably the most authentic approach is through fiction.
Interestingly, the Riot Press website describes the novel as “a speculative history of early 1990s identity politics during the heyday of ACT UP and Queer Nation.” While accurate, this is a rather dry description of Lawlor’s bawdy, irreverent, downright filthy, sweetly nostalgic and wonderfully lived-in novel.
I am unsure if the fact that Paul/Polly is technically a shapeshifter is a kind of cop-out when it comes to gender, but in the end, I think it works as a rather inventive device to look at either side of the fence, as it were.
What is also interesting is that while, superficially, the book is about sex – there are a lot of very graphic scenes – it ultimately morphs into a sophisticated debate about intimacy, especially when Diane enters the picture. Kirkus Reviews hits the nail on the head:
Eventually Paul has to decide on the level of intimacy he desires; specifically, who he wants to tell about his body. This suggests that intimacy is knowledge of an identity that transcends the corporeal form.
To be honest, it took me a long while to finish the book, as the gender-swopping and free-swinging sex scenes took me far out of my comfort zone. But that is probably a generational thing, as any gay millennial is unlikely to even bat an eyelid reading this. In the end, Paul/Polly’s journey of self-discovery is so heartfelt and true that the reader cannot help but be swept up into the story, especially the bittersweet ending.
March 22, 2023
i lost this book for six months and found it again. i started over and read it breathlessly in three nights …this genre defying gender bending queer adventure was magical, sexy and fun and somehow still made me tear up
November 18, 2025
first read and enjoyed this in 2023 and it is still as difficult to talk about and describe......... but i still stand by this being queer catcher in the rye, which means i think you need to be both a specific person to really enjoy this and an even more specific person to enjoy paul as a character.
feels extremely personal in a "gay who lived in the midwest and a coastal major blue city" way that makes me feel like a tool to even talk about. i feel like i have been paul, like i have known pauls, like i have known most of the side characters in this - the activist lesbian who thinks non-vegans are equivalent to nazis, the fellow femme4butch friend who cares very deeply about Theory and Rules (i do too, but i can recognize how annoying we are. i love when gay characters are annoying and mean and not politically correct, espec in a 2025 oasis of 'everyone is kind and soft and valid' queer media)
gender and presentation feeling like characters you are choosing every day to play, drag on the microscopic level, fun and exhausting and ultimately superficial. when you're gay in a hodunk rural nothing town and build your queerness through media, which gives you a blanket of intellectual superiority you can use to keep people at a distance, until you're suddenly in a place with more access to other queer people and realizing how awful and stupid you sound - irony-poisoned and allergic to sincerity.
and of course, throughout all of this, paul's refusal to accept less who he is and rather what he *wants* to be thrumming like tension building in a horror movie - tony pinto's calls haunting the whole text until that reveal.
there is this kind of idea in paul, who first actualized his queerness through books and movies, only to come into the world during the AIDs crisis that you thought you were joining a pleasure cruise just to find yourself on a sinking ship - the glamor and fun you were promised distant, belonging to a different generation. in many ways, coming out for me during another epidemic and fascist leader felt very similarly and created a similar avoidant streak in me for a very long time.
it can't be real if you don't give it a name. it is easy to pretend it isn't happening if you construct rules for how it happens. it cannot hurt you if you don't let it in. liz phair literally mentioned in this book (because of course) but fuck and run by her was a weird scream in the car anthem for me the first year of being out as a lesbian. So!
i do think a big thing missed in this also perhaps through people's gaps in queer history is just like, how non-existent and often unimportant seeming trans women issues were in queer spaces. i mean, whipping girl, where the very idea of transmisogyny was even first coined, wasn't published until 2007. camp trans, protesting the michigan women's festival that serves as a catalyst in this book wasn't a full and legitimatized operation until 1999 - 6 years after paul would have attended. the isolation and shame and displeasure at being referred to as 'campy' or 'drag' in this hurts my fucking heart man. tell a trans woman you know how much u love them RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!
feels extremely personal in a "gay who lived in the midwest and a coastal major blue city" way that makes me feel like a tool to even talk about. i feel like i have been paul, like i have known pauls, like i have known most of the side characters in this - the activist lesbian who thinks non-vegans are equivalent to nazis, the fellow femme4butch friend who cares very deeply about Theory and Rules (i do too, but i can recognize how annoying we are. i love when gay characters are annoying and mean and not politically correct, espec in a 2025 oasis of 'everyone is kind and soft and valid' queer media)
gender and presentation feeling like characters you are choosing every day to play, drag on the microscopic level, fun and exhausting and ultimately superficial. when you're gay in a hodunk rural nothing town and build your queerness through media, which gives you a blanket of intellectual superiority you can use to keep people at a distance, until you're suddenly in a place with more access to other queer people and realizing how awful and stupid you sound - irony-poisoned and allergic to sincerity.
and of course, throughout all of this, paul's refusal to accept less who he is and rather what he *wants* to be thrumming like tension building in a horror movie - tony pinto's calls haunting the whole text until that reveal.
there is this kind of idea in paul, who first actualized his queerness through books and movies, only to come into the world during the AIDs crisis that you thought you were joining a pleasure cruise just to find yourself on a sinking ship - the glamor and fun you were promised distant, belonging to a different generation. in many ways, coming out for me during another epidemic and fascist leader felt very similarly and created a similar avoidant streak in me for a very long time.
it can't be real if you don't give it a name. it is easy to pretend it isn't happening if you construct rules for how it happens. it cannot hurt you if you don't let it in. liz phair literally mentioned in this book (because of course) but fuck and run by her was a weird scream in the car anthem for me the first year of being out as a lesbian. So!
i do think a big thing missed in this also perhaps through people's gaps in queer history is just like, how non-existent and often unimportant seeming trans women issues were in queer spaces. i mean, whipping girl, where the very idea of transmisogyny was even first coined, wasn't published until 2007. camp trans, protesting the michigan women's festival that serves as a catalyst in this book wasn't a full and legitimatized operation until 1999 - 6 years after paul would have attended. the isolation and shame and displeasure at being referred to as 'campy' or 'drag' in this hurts my fucking heart man. tell a trans woman you know how much u love them RIGHT NOW!!!!!!!!!
August 15, 2024
“..𝘩𝘦 𝘣𝘦𝘨𝘢𝘯 𝘵𝘰 𝘸𝘰𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘧 𝘩𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶𝘵𝘩.”
I only like this but I want to love it.
It took 15 years for Lawlor to write this, always pledging that they were never concerned with character development, but the curse of this is that they use Paul as vessel for exploration. In all the crevices of sex and self.
Though smut runs fierce and forward to balance out all the dull moments in relationship-building throughout the book, it goes on for too long, feeling too much like graduate thesis in pools of the first half, painfully aware that Lawlor writes from the campus, is concerned with only the bubble in which they write in.
When Paul finds himself in San Francisco, a burst of earnestness arises. Not sure if this is because Lawlor lands in the precise sentiment they want to write in or if it’s because it became so personal to me.
You see, if I had this when I first moved to San Francisco as a Vietnamese-American queer tween twink who didn’t know what they wanted to do in life, changing majors thrice and working double shifts in a day while all going through stacked credits, I think life would’ve been kinder to me. If I had Paul alongside me, I could’ve done it alone, but with much more courage.
I mean, I’m still here. I went through it all. The ups. The downs. Though ends always haunted me. I thought of ends all the time. The great full stop that plagues your adolescence. Because life was hard. Life was abusive. Life was beyond me. That’s why I left to SF. All much like Paul, only to find him nearly a decade after.
What I’m trying to say is I lived this too early to love it in its lateness.
if I had read this when I first moved to SF, I think I would’ve been a lot kinder to the book. I would’ve been more forgiving with the way the book meandors. The way nothing really happens. The way it’s bloated by sex without much depth. But here I am. At 30. Wondering wondering wondering and still wandering much like Paul. Happy to have this in my hands better late than never.
I only like this but I want to love it.
It took 15 years for Lawlor to write this, always pledging that they were never concerned with character development, but the curse of this is that they use Paul as vessel for exploration. In all the crevices of sex and self.
Though smut runs fierce and forward to balance out all the dull moments in relationship-building throughout the book, it goes on for too long, feeling too much like graduate thesis in pools of the first half, painfully aware that Lawlor writes from the campus, is concerned with only the bubble in which they write in.
When Paul finds himself in San Francisco, a burst of earnestness arises. Not sure if this is because Lawlor lands in the precise sentiment they want to write in or if it’s because it became so personal to me.
You see, if I had this when I first moved to San Francisco as a Vietnamese-American queer tween twink who didn’t know what they wanted to do in life, changing majors thrice and working double shifts in a day while all going through stacked credits, I think life would’ve been kinder to me. If I had Paul alongside me, I could’ve done it alone, but with much more courage.
I mean, I’m still here. I went through it all. The ups. The downs. Though ends always haunted me. I thought of ends all the time. The great full stop that plagues your adolescence. Because life was hard. Life was abusive. Life was beyond me. That’s why I left to SF. All much like Paul, only to find him nearly a decade after.
What I’m trying to say is I lived this too early to love it in its lateness.
if I had read this when I first moved to SF, I think I would’ve been a lot kinder to the book. I would’ve been more forgiving with the way the book meandors. The way nothing really happens. The way it’s bloated by sex without much depth. But here I am. At 30. Wondering wondering wondering and still wandering much like Paul. Happy to have this in my hands better late than never.
November 18, 2019
The year 1993 was incredibly important for me personally as I was just becoming a teenager at that point and awkwardly figuring out my own identity. This is the year in which Andrea Lawlor’s wickedly funny and absorbing novel is set. Its story bears all the marks of that era with references to zines, mix tapes and an increasingly assertive queer population that enthusiastically formed tight-knit communities outside of mainstream heterosexual culture. So I felt a strong affinity toward Paul, the novel’s 23 year-old hero who is more interested in hooking up with a wide variety of people than completing his college degree. We follow his journey navigating urban life between seedy gay hotspots, lesbian communes and leather bars while having lots of sex with men and women along the way. It’s quickly revealed that Paul has a special ability to morph like a mythological figure and physically transform into a woman. This allows Paul to change his body and genitals to suit the desires of any man or woman whether they are gay or straight. In this way he gains intimate access to the bedrooms and communities of a whole spectrum of people in his quest to understand where he belongs. It’s an inventive way of memorializing the many-varied and radical subcultures of this time period as well as questioning the meaning of gender identity.
Read my full review of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor on LonesomeReader
Read my full review of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor on LonesomeReader
August 30, 2019
I think it’s telling that I finished this novel over a month ago and I’m still haunted by how much I didn’t like it.
May 17, 2020
The androgynous lead character of the story is able to surreptitiously shape-shift and change their gender. In many ways the story is about an alternative version of Americana; one far removed from the zeitgeist of rosy-cheeked young girls and apple pies, but which is instead focused on outcasts and drudgery, on conversations about heteronormativity, Fassbender and Genet, one which has an almost Proustian prevalence of homosexual or bisexual characters, a novel steeped in sex and lumbered with lust, one of finding meaning and a sense of belonging in isolation rather than community. 'Paul Take The Form of a Mortal Girl' is more than just an exploration of gender, it is an exploration of American culture, as it upends the various myths which surround it.
The protagonist, Paul, is a young person who reflects back on his teenage years and all of the interactions which turn him into the person he is. From his time as somebody who exists on the periphery of school social life, to his time as a being whose beauty inspires lust in those round him, from rock singers to shy young cafe workers, to getting lost on the vast anonymity of New York and San Francisco. Whereas there is something fairly juvenile and rote about Paul's interactions with others, from the pretentious film students or butch lesbians who he encounters, the originality of the story lies in the impact which Paul's constant changes of gender have on his interaction with the world; Paul is one of the few characters in literature who isn't just gender fluid but is essentially genderless and who is therefore able to explore and dismantle all of the norms which come with gender identities.
The protagonist, Paul, is a young person who reflects back on his teenage years and all of the interactions which turn him into the person he is. From his time as somebody who exists on the periphery of school social life, to his time as a being whose beauty inspires lust in those round him, from rock singers to shy young cafe workers, to getting lost on the vast anonymity of New York and San Francisco. Whereas there is something fairly juvenile and rote about Paul's interactions with others, from the pretentious film students or butch lesbians who he encounters, the originality of the story lies in the impact which Paul's constant changes of gender have on his interaction with the world; Paul is one of the few characters in literature who isn't just gender fluid but is essentially genderless and who is therefore able to explore and dismantle all of the norms which come with gender identities.
December 30, 2017
Every page of this PTTFOAMG sparkles with sly, clever wit and sharp insights, both sociological and psychological. The novel is delightfully free of the tediously tidy character arcs or contrived plot complications so common to middlebrow fiction these days; instead, readers are treated to an amusingly rakish protagonist's meandering adventures. In other words, it's a true picaresque. And speaking of the protag, Paul, the promo for the novel highlights his shape & gender shifting, but that's his least compelling characteristic, IMHO. Paul's true charm is that he's the very apotheosis of twink-dom, a playfully narcissist little scamp – at once a deplorably shallow and conniving social climber and a sympathetically insecure outsider. Another treat for readers: the story contains a superabundance of cultural references from the queer explosion of the early 1990s.
October 2, 2020
I feel like I missed something with this book! It sounds like my perfect book, but I found it to be really choppy and slow, with a lot of unsatisfying sex mixed in. There wasn’t really any character motivation, and I just didn’t care about Paul. I appreciate a MC being flawed, but he didn’t really seem like much of anything?
It also felt a bit... exclusionary? Not that it would have been necessary for Paul to identify as trans, but the queer characters were more so the lesbians who misgendered a trans man who was killed and there was no discussion about it.
I’m bummed about this.
It also felt a bit... exclusionary? Not that it would have been necessary for Paul to identify as trans, but the queer characters were more so the lesbians who misgendered a trans man who was killed and there was no discussion about it.
I’m bummed about this.
August 8, 2019
What a book! Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a powerful, explicit, surprisingly moving exploration of lust and love, sex and gender, as well as a nostalgic – but not rose-colored – look back at the queer scene(s) of the ‘90s.
Paul is a person who can change his body to take the form of a man or a woman – with some further alterations in physical composition within those two types – and who uses this to pursue a rich variety of sexual pleasures. He likes to think of himself as a predator, a shark – pursuing his sexual conquests like prey. But over the course of the novel, his vulnerability is exposed to both himself and the reader, as he falls in love and tries to maintain a relationship with a woman, mourns his lost first love, and seeks out a person he once encountered who he feels might be like him.
It’s funny, obnoxious, sexy, and tragic to spend all these pages in Paul’s head – because he is himself all of those things – but it’s also consistently fascinating. His pretentious college-boy takes – both internally, and in some hilarious stretches of dialogue – on sex, gender, feminism, and queer culture are a sharply portrayed evocation, and also parody, of various early ‘90s scenes, as Paul travels through night clubs, sex clubs, musical festivals, and bookstores in New York, Iowa City, Provincetown, and San Francisco. Lawlor balances sendup and affection really well; the characters’ actions and attitudes may seem a little backwards and ridiculous by modern standards, but there’s an almost noble optimism to them at times too. It’s a really interesting portrait of this time and these places.
Paul, too, is a shifty character in more ways than one: I think most readers will want to smack him one minute and pull him into a hug the next. I love the lightness, the stumbling grace, with which Lawlor dances Paul from one situation to another. He just builds very beautifully as a character; as the pages pass, you figure out more and more about what makes him tick, and what the cost of his ceaseless searching is. It’s easy to imagine this novel without the literal genderbending, but its presence adds a richness, a magical quality, that really enhances and distinguishes the book. I wouldn’t call this a sexy novel – in spite of all the graphically described sex, the mood is not very sensual – but it is a beguiling one.
This book is that increasingly rare thing: one not quite like anything I’ve ever encountered before. And I just didn’t want to put it down. There’s a rawness to it that, despite the book’s occasional imperfections, lend it a powerful and lasting effect. Having read it, I would instantly snap up whatever Lawlor produces next.
Paul is a person who can change his body to take the form of a man or a woman – with some further alterations in physical composition within those two types – and who uses this to pursue a rich variety of sexual pleasures. He likes to think of himself as a predator, a shark – pursuing his sexual conquests like prey. But over the course of the novel, his vulnerability is exposed to both himself and the reader, as he falls in love and tries to maintain a relationship with a woman, mourns his lost first love, and seeks out a person he once encountered who he feels might be like him.
It’s funny, obnoxious, sexy, and tragic to spend all these pages in Paul’s head – because he is himself all of those things – but it’s also consistently fascinating. His pretentious college-boy takes – both internally, and in some hilarious stretches of dialogue – on sex, gender, feminism, and queer culture are a sharply portrayed evocation, and also parody, of various early ‘90s scenes, as Paul travels through night clubs, sex clubs, musical festivals, and bookstores in New York, Iowa City, Provincetown, and San Francisco. Lawlor balances sendup and affection really well; the characters’ actions and attitudes may seem a little backwards and ridiculous by modern standards, but there’s an almost noble optimism to them at times too. It’s a really interesting portrait of this time and these places.
Paul, too, is a shifty character in more ways than one: I think most readers will want to smack him one minute and pull him into a hug the next. I love the lightness, the stumbling grace, with which Lawlor dances Paul from one situation to another. He just builds very beautifully as a character; as the pages pass, you figure out more and more about what makes him tick, and what the cost of his ceaseless searching is. It’s easy to imagine this novel without the literal genderbending, but its presence adds a richness, a magical quality, that really enhances and distinguishes the book. I wouldn’t call this a sexy novel – in spite of all the graphically described sex, the mood is not very sensual – but it is a beguiling one.
This book is that increasingly rare thing: one not quite like anything I’ve ever encountered before. And I just didn’t want to put it down. There’s a rawness to it that, despite the book’s occasional imperfections, lend it a powerful and lasting effect. Having read it, I would instantly snap up whatever Lawlor produces next.
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