tl;dr

Lawn Boy is another terrific, heartwarming, smart and very funny novel from Jonathan Evison.

opening remarks

Jonathan Evison’s The Revised Fundamentals of Caregiving was one of the loveliest, funniest, most heartwarming books I read back in the pre-Trump years of 2013.  Evison wrote a subsequent novel back in 2015 – This Is Your Life, Harriet Chance – that until recently I didn’t know existed.  One day I’ll pick it up, but until then I thought I’d read his latest book Lawn Boy.

knee-jerk observations

You gotta love a best friend who feels compelled to put down every girl you might find attractive:

Mike Munoz, in his early-twenties, lives with his mother and his intellectually disabled older brother Nate.  Mike earns money mowing other people’s lawns as part of a landscaping crew.  Because his mother works multiple shifts, Mike looks after his brother at night, severely curtailing his social life. Mike’s situation isn’t helped by his best friend Nick who keeps pushing Mike to fuck any girl who exhibits a modicum of interest; it’s how Mike lost his virginity:

While he may no longer be a virgin, life has not been easy for Mike and his family.  They lost nearly everything when they were kicked out of their house after the landlord suddenly increased the rent.  This led to a period when they lived in Mike’s mother’s car:

There’s been quite a bit of discussion of late about fiction failing to represent the lived experiences of people who exist below the poverty line.  The difficulties that Mike raises below – that people desperate to make ends meet don’t have time to write a novel about their life – is, of course, borne out by the fact that we are reading a book by a writer who has achieved a moderate amount of success and thus has time to write about these experiences.  It’s all very chicken and egg, i.e. the moment you have the time and resources to write a novel about poverty you’re no longer poor.  That’s not to say the experience of being poor vanishes the moment you creep above the poverty line; it’s also not to say that people barely earning a living don’t write about it while experiencing it – Adelle Stripe illustrated this in her brilliant novel about playwright Andrea Dunbar (Black Teeth and a Brilliant Smile) – but it is rare.

After losing his landscaping job, Mike fruitlessly spends a week looking for work.  When he’s told by a mate about a lawn job at a business park he rushes over – or tries to, his truck breaks down halfway there.  To top it all off, there’s nowhere for him to wallow in his pity now that a bloke named Freddy has moved into the garage:

Mike’s commentary about social inequality, a consistent theme of the novel so far.  No surprises given his own particular situation.

Mike eventually gets a job piecing together bobbleheads and other cheap crap.  His boss, Chaz, is an alcoholic who gets Mike to blow into the interlock device on Chaz’s BMW so the car will start.  Chaz is what we would call in Yiddish a shvitza; you might call him a snake oil salesman.  His view on money would bear that out:

One thing I do appreciate about the novel is that Mike regularly calls Nick on his homophobic, racist and deeply misogynist attitudes.  He doesn’t keep quiet or let Nick’s offensive shit wash over him.  It does mean their relationship is anything but smooth.  I also appreciate that Nick isn’t a strawman or racist comedy relief.

Given I’m not even halfway through the novel, I’m sure this state of affairs won’t last.  Regardless this is a lovely piece of writing:

Lawn Boy is very funny and overflowing with hijinks.  There’s the bit when Mike has a toothache, can’t afford to go to the dentist and so has Freddy, the tenant, yank out the offending molar with a pair of pliers.  Unfortunately, it’s the wrong tooth.  And then there’s the time Freddy, Mike and Nate are pulled over by a traffic cop and things quickly go south due to series of misunderstandings, including the windows not rolling down and Nate going ballistic in the back seat.  A shot is fired, thankfully no-one is hurt.  These incidents, which are played for laughs, emphasise the issue of poverty, of economic inequality.  And if the hijinks don’t make the point clearly enough, Mike loudly, with scorn and frustration, points out the divide:

Mike gets a lucky break – rare in this novel – and finds landscaping work with real estate agent Doug Goble.  It’s interesting, in the passage below, how Mike instinctively undervalues his labour.

One of Mike’s first major jobs for Goble is at a country club.  Just arriving at the place triggers a passionate reaction:

No, it’s never just been about money.

The Gist Of It

I’ve been looking forward to Lawn Boy since Jonathan Evison announced the book on his Facebook page last year. He’s an author with a distinctive style who cares deeply about his characters and isn’t afraid to write feel-good fiction that tackles contemporary issues.

Lawn Boy is a post-Trump book, one that recognises that the gap between the rich and the poor has widened and that the American dream, if it ever existed, has less to do with hard work and more to do with capital and contacts.  The trials and tribulations that Miles’ faces isn’t a case of an author throwing everything but the kitchen sink at his character but rather an accurate indication of what the unemployed in 21st America deal with.  Miles lack of experience, his unwillingness to work nights because he needs to care for his developmentally disabled brother, means that finding any meaningful work is near impossible.  The obstacles then, the failed interviews, the shady employees, the poor working conditions, the general abuse screams authenticity.  The fact that Miles does, (spoilers) land on his feet, setting up a landscaping business with his mate Tino requires some good fortune, but it’s earned.

If there’s one message that Evison expresses in Lawn Boy, beyond the social and economic commentary, it’s that life is about figuring out who you are and then being true to that.  We see this in how Miles ultimately deals with less than reputable employees like Chaz and Goble but especially in how he navigates his love life.  As a man in his early 20s, Miles sexuality is a confused mess, stunted by not having much of a social life and a lack of role models to fall back on given his father walked out on the family when Miles was eleven and his best friend Nick is a homophobic, racist and sexist douchebag.  Miles does have the hots for a waitress, Remy, working at the local family restaurant, but he has no idea how to approach her.  The expectation is that Remy and Miles will, eventually get it on, but Evison doesn’t take the easy route.  What he does do is surprising, sensitively depicted and the source of much of the feels in this novel. (No spoilers).  It’s Evison’s ability to do something unexpected but beautiful, while at the same time weaving in astute social commentary, which elevates this coming of age story.

Lawn Boy is another terrific, heartwarming, smart and very funny novel from Jonathan Evison.