Paul Takes the Form of A Mortal Girl
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By Andrea Lawlor
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Garth GreenwellIt’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 lesbian best friend, makes zines, and is a flaneur with a rich dating life.
But Paul’s also got a secret: he’s a shapeshifter. Oscillating wildly from Riot Grrrl to leather cub, Women’s Studies major to trade, Paul transforms his body at will in a series of adventures that take him from Iowa City to Boystown to Provincetown and finally to San Francisco – a journey through the deep queer archives of struggle and pleasure. Andrea Lawlor’s debut novel offers a speculative history of early 90s identity politics during the heyday of ACT UP and Queer Nation.
Paul Takes the Form of A Mortal Girl is a riotous, razor-sharp bildungsroman whose hero/ine wends his way through a world gutted by loss, pulsing with music, and opening into an array of intimacy and connections. ‘Playful, sexy, smart, and like nothing else I -or you – have ever read before.’ Carmen Maria Machado
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