Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
Ada’s Score
Lawlor's novel moves through 1993 with the restless, shapeshifting energy of its protagonist — Paul, a queer twentysomething who can literally transform his body at will. That central conceit isn't metaphor dressed as plot; it's a serious formal argument about gender, desire, and identity as fluid, chosen, and endlessly renegotiated. The prose is confident and allusive, drawing on feminist theory, downtown culture, and queer history without ever becoming a lecture. What makes it succeed is its lightness — Lawlor handles enormous ideas with wit and specificity. Best suited to those comfortable with fragmented, essayistic fiction that demands active engagement.
Ada Brief
AI reading intelligence"A novel that makes gender feel like weather — something you move through rather than something fixed. Strange and genuinely alive."
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A Body That Shifts Like Desire Itself
There's a giddiness to this novel that I find completely irresistible — Lawlor writes Paul's shapeshifting body and desire with such kinetic, joyful specificity that the book feels less like fiction and more like a dare. The prose moves the way Paul moves: restless, hungry, slipping between registers of theory and tenderness without ever losing its cool. I finished it feeling strangely enlarged, like something in me had been given permission to be less fixed.
Book Details
- Publisher
- Pan Macmillan
- Published
- January 1, 2017
- Pages
- 336
- Language
- English
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