Reviews with content warning for Transphobia - Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl

Reviews tagging 'Transphobia'

Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl by Andrea Lawlor

19 reviews

clarkg's review

adventurous challenging emotional funny reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

I really enjoyed this book! At first blush, it's about shapeshifting, perception, queer life, and the refusal to be defined by any one thing--whether that be gender, genre, or subculture. Based on this premise alone, I worried that genderbending would be played for shock value, which would have been kind of tired as far as queer fiction goes. Lawlor's prose quickly burned away my misgivings and delivered a sharp, complicating, and tender tableau of queer desire and community.

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joensign's review against another edition

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adventurous funny reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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savvylit's review

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adventurous funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

Distilled down to its essence, Paul takes the form of a mortal girl is a horny, genderfluid coming-of-age novel. Paul is a messy protagonist who doesn't seem to have any goals beyond sleeping with everyone he deems cute or cool. Paul does ultimately have some character development, though it takes a while. Getting to know and then mirroring himself after older queer folks eventually allows him to realize who and how he wants to be.

While this novel is unique conceptually, I didn't love it merely because I am not the intended audience. I think that this novel would be so meaningful and powerful to someone young & queer in the early 1990s, when this book is set. There were so many era-specific cultural references that I could feel going completely over my head. Furthermore, and maybe I'm a prude (?) but I enjoy a little bit more plot or characterization beyond "Paul had sex with this person and then this person" over and over again. Large swaths of the novel were composed entirely of detailed descriptions of Paul's conquests.

I am doing @openbookopen's Queer Your Year reading challenge and one of the prompts is "Genderfuckery!" and if Paul takes the form of a mortal girl could be summed up in one word, it would definitely be that. Also - this was my first read of #transrightsreadathon 2024!

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sarah984's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This was an interesting portrait of a tumultuous time, but the pov character (and most of the other characters honestly) was almost unbearable to read about, and the ending felt like it kind of petered out.

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annekepaige's review against another edition

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Sturggled with the lack of a solid plot & found the characters extremely unlikeable

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bronzeageholly's review against another edition

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emotional funny mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

In one word? Masterful.

Paul/Polly’s character is so well crafted she/he could walk off the page and I wouldn’t know they weren’t real.

This is a book of personal journey, perfect for those who love a flawed protagonist. We drift with Paul/Polly as they tackle passion, grief, guilt, loss, gratitude. We are afloat in the heady haze of existence with them, learning (or not learning) about themselves along the way.

Change is omnipresent for Paul/Polly, most significantly in their gender fluidity but also in friendships, living situations, identity, jobs, relationships, music, and bars.

The short stories that were placed throughout the text were so enticing. They reminded me a lot of Jerome K Jerome’s ‘Three Men in a Boat’; the reader is left wondering whether there is something a little more we were meant to get from the tale, another moral left to find, an extra metaphor left to uncover.

All in all, this book is a stunning and unreserved tribute to community, to finding ourselves, to being aware of ourselves, to queer theory and queer love and queer freedom.

((definitely an 18+ read!))

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