Dedicated to N&H, whose Year of Queer Literature reading project inspired this review series celebrating stories of queer love, resilience, and reflection.

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl (2017) by Andrea Lawlor is wild, sexy, and philosophical — a queer picaresque that moves between bodies, lovers, and subcultures in 1990s America. Its shapeshifting protagonist, Paul (or Polly, or whoever they decide to be), can alter their gender at will. Through this ability, Lawlor explores not just the fluidity of desire but the cultural forces that try to confine it.

More than a plot, this book is an experience: erotic, political, and spiritual. Lawlor’s prose vibrates with punk energy and tenderness, examining what it means to live beyond binaries — and how transformation can be both freedom and loneliness.

What it’s about

Paul Polydoris works in a dyke bar in Iowa City, falling in and out of bodies and identities. As they shift forms, they move through lesbian collectives, gay men’s bars, feminist theory seminars, and the rave scene — each subculture both sanctuary and constraint. The novel follows Paul’s hunger for connection, culminating in a love story that defies categories and asks what remains when all external identities are stripped away.

For readers who loved Detransition, Baby but wished for more play and provocation, or for those drawn to the experimental sensuality of Orlando, this book feels like a bridge between eras — a queer myth rewritten as road trip, manifesto, and love letter.

Major themes

Gender as performance and possibility

Paul’s shapeshifting isn’t a metaphor — it’s a literal embodiment of gender fluidity, pushing beyond identity politics into existential curiosity. Lawlor treats the body as a playground, not a prison. For essays on embodiment and autonomy, see Be Curious and Communicate.

Desire and danger

Set amid the AIDS crisis and queer cultural renaissance, the novel pulses with sex, risk, and longing. Lawlor captures eroticism not as spectacle but as language — how intimacy communicates truth. For related reflections, explore Comfort Violations and The Art of No.

Freedom versus belonging

Paul’s transformations give them infinite freedom but little rootedness. Lawlor asks what community looks like for those who refuse to be fixed. This theme echoes throughout the series — from the chosen families of The Great Believers to the fluid friendships of I Kissed Shara Wheeler.

Strengths

• Innovative form: Genre-defying blend of erotica, philosophy, and bildungsroman.
• Fearless voice: Lawlor’s language is witty, poetic, and unapologetically queer.
• Cultural snapshot: Captures the contradictions of 1990s queer life — liberation entwined with loss.

Where it may not work for everyone

• Fragmented narrative: The nonlinear structure and shifting tone can feel disorienting.
• Explicit content: Sex is political here, but readers expecting restraint may be challenged.
• Philosophical density: The novel weaves in queer theory, which may overwhelm those unfamiliar with its references.

Why it matters now

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl feels even more relevant today than when it was published. Its refusal to reduce gender or sexuality to fixed categories reflects the contemporary movement toward expansiveness and nuance. Lawlor celebrates not just identity but transformation itself — the right to keep changing, endlessly. For readers exploring queer theory or embodiment, this book pairs beautifully with Orlando and Nevada.

“There is no true self — only the self you make.”

Conversation prompts

• What does it mean to desire transformation rather than stability?
• How does gender function as both armor and language?
• Where does community end and conformity begin?
• Can liberation exist without connection?

Adjacent reads & reflections

• Gender and time: Orlando.
• Trans identity and self-invention: Nevada.
• Embodiment and desire: A History of My Brief Body.

Closing reflection

Andrea Lawlor’s novel is a shapeshifter in its own right — part manifesto, part love story, part fever dream. Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl captures the radical joy of queer becoming: the courage to live without conclusion. It’s a book that asks not what you are, but what else you could be — and answers, simply, everything.