Is Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl Worth Reading?
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.
New Voice“A novel that makes gender feel like weather — something you move through rather than something fixed. Strange and genuinely alive.”
Shapeshifting Through the Nineties: Andrea Lawlor's Audacious Debut
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is the kind of novel that announces itself immediately as something you've never read before — a picaresque romp through 90s queer subcultures with a protagonist who can literally reshape their body to move between worlds. Lawlor writes with a specificity and irreverence that feels almost archival, preserving a particular moment in queer history while gleefully refusing to be tidy or instructive about it. In this brief, we celebrate what happens when a writer trusts their readers enough to be genuinely, uncompromisingly strange.
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.”
Shapeshifting Through the Nineties: Andrea Lawlor's Audacious Debut
Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is the kind of novel that announces itself immediately as something you've never read before — a picaresque romp through 90s queer subcultures with a protagonist who can literally reshape their body to move between worlds. Lawlor writes with a specificity and irreverence that feels almost archival, preserving a particular moment in queer history while gleefully refusing to be tidy or instructive about it. In this brief, we celebrate what happens when a writer trusts their readers enough to be genuinely, uncompromisingly strange.
Book Details
- Publisher
- Vintage
- Published
- January 1, 2019
- Pages
- 352
- Language
- ENG
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Ada’s Score
3.8
Ada’s editorial score — not an aggregate of reader reviews.
Common Questions About Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl
- Is Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl worth reading?
- A novel that makes gender feel like weather — something you move through rather than something fixed. Strange and genuinely alive. Ada rates it 3.8 out of 5.
- How many pages is Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl?
- Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is 352 pages long — around 6–7 hours at an average reading pace.
