Lawnboy [Paperback]

Paul Lisicky (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1998

Fiction. The adventure of seventeen-year-old Evan's life begins with mowing a neighbor's lawn, an ordinary chore that launches him into a world of desire, confusion, and betrayal. LAWNBOY is about the possibility of finding connection in a world of broken relationships and decaying motels -- the urban, artificial landscape of South Florida, as lush and troubling as Evan's imagination.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Lisicky's long, attentive, gay coming-of-age novel largely sticks to familiar paths. Seventeen-year-old narrator Evan mows the lawn of his older Miami neighbor, William; one day they begin a secret affair. At first, denying his nature, Evan tries to date his best friend, Jane; soon, though, he runs away from his cold and critical parents to live at William's house. When their affair ends, Evan heads to Fort Lauderdale, where his estranged older brother Peter operates a seedy motel. There Evan meets Hector, Peter's assistant and sometime lover. (We later learn that Peter is bisexual, and may have fathered a child.) The worldly Hector teaches Evan what he knows about life and about being gay. When Hector moves on, Evan travels back to Miami, where he finds work in a plant nursery, and, sadder but wiser, awaits the future. The prose in Lisicky's debut ranges from competent to impressive. In one excellent scene, Hector wants to dress Evan in drag: "And then he strayed from the outlines of my mouth, applying bars of lipstick across my jaw, my cheeks, my forehead, my hair." Lisicky takes care to lay out his constantly worried protagonist's inner life; consistent symbolism likens Evan to plants waiting to put down roots. The plot, however, proceeds slowly and predictably, with some sex but not much sexiness. At one time, any honest coming-out novel could surprise, enlighten and excite: now the coming-out story is an established and honored literary genre. Apart from some Floridian locales, Lisicky's debut adds little to the form. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

" Lawnboy is a sprawling, powerful, and intriguing tale. Lisicky's characters are rich and complex." -- Sydney Star Observer, Abigail Maklor, November 15, 1999

"Evan Sarshik is a wonderfully written character; Lisicky expertly captures his contradictions and complexities." -- Rain Taxi, Thomas Fagan, Winter 1999/2000

"Lawnboy is as dreamy and lush as the south Florida landscape it inhabits. It is funny, dead-on insightful, and...sexy." -- Ann Patchett

"This adventure-of-the-heart takes place in as evocative a landscape as any you'll find in fiction, its Floridian decay and lushness the perfect setting for a story dense with eroticism, disillusionment, and the surprising grace notes of renewal" -- Bernard Cooper

Lisicky charts Evan's conflicting emotions deftly.... Humorous and moving...hitting musical notes of insight and wit. -- Austin Chronicle, Martin Johnson, December 10, 1999

Lisicky's prose shines, at times hilarious, at others entrenched in sorrow and longing, but always gorgeous to read.... The reconciliations between the characters are moving and earned, graced with compassion and vitality. -- Book Magazine, Bret Anthony Johnston, September-October, 1999

Paul Lisicky conveys the sweetness and lostness of a boy, and the senselessness of making him choose between extremes. -- The Los Angeles Times Sunday Book Review, Susan Salter Reynolds

Paul Lisicky has a bright, narrative style that successfully skirts the razor's edge of smugness: a voice to watch. -- Flaunt, Max Buda, October, 1999

Savvy enough to recognize the importance of buzz cuts and sleeveless shirts in gay identity formation, Lisicky is also smart enough not to rely on hackneyed consumer-culture signifiers, resulting in a lushly emotional, romantic and tragic pursuit. -- Paper, Mark Jacobs, November, 1999

The sexual awakening of a gay teenager leads to a peculiar, short-ranged rebellion in Paul Lisicky's moody, thoughtful first novel.... Lawnboy recalls standouts of the genre. -- San Francisco Chronicle, October 17, 1999

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Product Details

• Paperback: 374 pages
• Publisher: Turtle Point Press; 1 edition (January 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1885983409
• ISBN-13: 978-1885983404
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (34 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,011,271 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Paul Lisicky is the author of LAWNBOY, FAMOUS BUILDER, and THE BURNING HOUSE. His work has appeared in PLOUGHSHARES, THE IOWA REVIEW, FIVE POINTS, STORY QUARTERLY, GULF COAST, SUBTROPICS, and other magazines and anthologies. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, his awards include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the James Michener/Copernicus Society, and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, where he was twice a fellow. He has taught in the writing programs at Cornell University, Rutgers-Newark, Sarah Lawrence College, the University of North Carolina-Wilmington, and elsewhere. He currently teaches at NYU. UNBUILT PROJECTS, a collection of short prose pieces, is forthcoming from Four Way Books in Fall 2012. He lives in New York City. See his blog, MYSTERY BEAST, at http://paullisicky.blogspot.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

115 of 118 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An astute tale of suburban "gay angst", January 18, 2000

By 

Michael Leonard - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lawnboy (Paperback)

Lawnboy is a beautifully realised, erotic and at times wonderfully sexy read from first time author Paul Lisicky. The characterisations are spot on and the story of a young gay guy's emotional and spiritual growth is quite riveting. This is a remarkably bittersweet tale which effectively portrays the "topographical" emotional growth of Evan a seventeen year old "gay everyman" Lisicky sets his novel against the decaying suburban world of South Florida and uses this to symbolically portray the ever existing dysfunctionalilties that can exist in contemporary families. Evan nurtures a private world which is full of sexual and emotional longing and Lisicky effectively juxtaposes this with the indiscriminate ugliness of the landscapes he walks in. Adolescent confusion, the first gay sexual passion, sexuality in the age of AIDS, sibling and parental relationships and the transience of everyday life are all addressed with startling alacrity in this book. There is a genuine compassion evident in Evan's journey through adolescence - witness his first relationship with the older and world weary Willam and its subsequent disintegraton. There is compassion evident in his strained relationship with his overbearing father, ineffectual mother and his sexually ambivalent brother. The passion is evident in his affair with Hector, the sexy urbanite. This leads to ultimate fulfillment in the arms of the affable and altuistic Perry. This is an incedibly naturalistic and gritty piece of work and Lisicky never "sugar coats" or compromises Evan's circumstances and his desperation to be loved. Evan moves on in life and at the end of the novel we hopefully see him grow up. Lawnboy is a wonderful examination of the growth of the young gay male psyche and this is something that I think people whether gay or straight can at some point in their lives relate to.

Michael Leonard

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Lisicky has put the human condition under a 3D microscope !!, September 19, 1999

By 

Billy Pilgrim (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Lawnboy (Paperback)

Lawnboy treats its characters; gay, straight, and undecided with compassion, probity and wit. I couldn't put it down and this coming of age novel of the lead character Evan is a real page turner. Note how the author allows you to smell something on almost every page and how an olfactory evaluation of a person is a language in and of itself. Lawnboy can and should be read and enjoyed by everybody and not considered genre fiction. The author draws the amazing characters well and then sets them in motion as they scramble for the answer to big question: "why are we here, what is worth doing?" and comes up with some great insights. I see hints of Cunningham's Home at the End of the World here but Lisicki is definately an original.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Entertaining/disturbing view of interpersonal relationships, December 30, 1999

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lawnboy (Paperback)

Paul Lisicky's Lawnboy is an engrossing excursion that steadily drives through the shallow interpersonal relationships that haunt us at the end of a disillusioning century to the endpoint of introspection. Though enormously sucessful as a storyteller, it is this clinical examination of what has happened to us as individiuals searching for acceptance, for love, for some organization of the chaotic emotional world in which we find ourselves that the author makes this novel so successful. Lisicky's characters are well drawn, and if they seem a bit out of focus when it comes to their cravings and drives, their encounters sexual and otherwise, then it is to his credit that he can so deftly focus on the fears and weaknesses we all harbour. That the characters include gay men/boys is only incidental; there are no stereotypes. Lisicky has managed to paint a visual and cerebral landscape of Florida as a metaphor of how we have misguidedly "improved" a natural landscape much the same as we whittle away at our lives. There are no absolutes here, only glimpses of things gone awry. This is a clarion call for reaccessing the way we take care of each other on this lonely planet.....and this is a VERY fine first novel!