Review
"...groundbreaking, shape- and genre-shifting work from a daring writer; a fresh novel that elevates questions of sexual identity and intimacy." ―Kirkus (starred review)
"Exploring the malleability of gender and desire, and paying homage to Virginia Woolf's 'Orlando,' the book follows Paul--sometimes Polly--as s/he searches for love and the 'uncontaminated truest' self. The quest leads through New York City at the height of the AIDS crisis, Iowa City's queer punk scene, off-season Provincetown, a womyn's festival in Michigan, and, finally, San Francisco. Lawlor successfully mixes pop culture, gender theory, and smut, but [their] greatest achievement is that Paul is no mere symbol but a vibrantly yearning being, 'like everybody else, only more so.'" ― The New Yorker
"...a hilarious, original, gender-fluid novel replete with 1990s cachet, sex, and queer identity...a new benchmark for gender-nonconforming literature that introduces the undeniable skill,talent, and originality of new voice in fiction" ―Foreword (starred review)
"...a witty and raucous portrait of LGBT radicalism during the early '90s....an exhilarating picaresque hero..." ―The Washington Blade
"An intelligent and dashing work, Paul Takes the Form is destined to become, in the time-honored tradition of The Price of Salt, Rubyfruit Jungle, and Valencia, the go-to coming of age novel for the latest generation of wanderlustful rabble-rousers." -Sarah Fonseca, Lambda Literary
From the Back Cover
"I love this book, in all its ecstasy, wit, and hilarity. I laughed out loud in recognition and appreciation of Lawlor's spot-on portraitof an era, scene, and soundtrack, the novel's particular sluice ofpleasures, fluids, and feelings. The liberatory rush of Lawlor's writing is as rare as it is contagious, not to mention HOT. Paul is on fire,and an antihero for the ages." ―Maggie Nelson, author of The Argonauts
"Fast-paced and cheeky, full of intellectual riffs, of observations so sharp they feel like gossip, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a touchingly sweet-hearted and deeply cool book. Andrea Lawlor haswritten a magic story, showing us the real magic of our world in theprocess. If you like your humor supersmart and your theory full of campand irony and heart, you won't be able to put this book down." ―Michelle Tea, author of Black Wave
"I am such a fan. Andrea Lawlor's prose is restless, muscular and playfuland uncannily able to zero in on the cultural details that make theworld Paul is traveling through shimmer and pucker with truth. Stealthtoo. Lawlor is either a good 'liver' or a good liar. They know. In Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl Lawlor takes the ancient trope of 'the changeling' and makes it be me,you. Paul's such a funny book that studies how studied we are especially when we go out. Who do we seek and who or what is seeking? It's a tight satisfying masterpiece which I am very glad to hand you if you happen to love sex, clothes, literature which now includes the apparitional blessing of a new elastic genre (which Paul initiates) that seamlessly makes both what's out there and in here less lonely, less fixed and less fake. This book updates the present. In Andrea Lawlor's fiction the dream walks, and I watch. Paul's got flickering feet like Mercury." ―Eileen Myles, author of Afterglow: A Dog Memoir
About the Author
Andrea Lawlor lives in Western Massachusetts and teaches writing at Mount Holyoke College. Lawlor is a fiction editor for Fence and the author of a chapbook, Position Papers (Factory Hollow Press, 2016) and a novel, Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (Rescue Press, 2017).
