Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

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Andrea Lawlor: Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (2020, Pan Macmillan)

320 pages

English language

Published Jan. 21, 2020 by Pan Macmillan.

ISBN:
978-1-5290-0767-1
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5 stars (2 reviews)

It's 1993 and Paul Polydoris tends bar at the only gay club in a university town thrumming with politics and partying. He studies queer theory, has a dyke best friend, makes zines, and is a flâneur with a rich dating life. But Paul's also got a secret: he's a shapeshifter. Oscillating wildly from Riot Grrrl to leather cub, Women's Studies major to trade, Paul transforms his body at will in a series of adventures that take him from Iowa City to Boystown to Provincetown and finally to San Francisco--a journey through the deep queer archives of struggle and pleasure. Andrea Lawlor's debut novel offers a speculative history of early '90s identity politics during the heyday of ACT UP and Queer Nation. Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a riotous, razor-sharp bildungsroman whose hero/ine wends his way through a world gutted by loss, pulsing with music, and opening …

4 editions

Subjects

  • Fiction, gay
  • Fiction, fantasy, general
  • San francisco (calif.), fiction
  • Fiction, coming of age