Setting the Lawn on Fire
by Mack Friedman
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Description
Setting the Lawn on Fire, the first novel by critically acclaimed writer Mack Friedman, trails its narrator through his obsessions with sex, drugs, art, and poison. Ivan, a young Jewish boy from Milwaukee, embarks on a journey of sexual discovery that leads him from Wisconsin to Alaska, Philadelphia, and Mexico through stints as a fishery worker, artist, and finally a hustler who learns to provide the blank canvas for other people's dreams. The result is a new kind of coming-of-age story show more that sees passion from every angle because its protagonist is every kind of lover: the seducer and the seduced, the pornographer and the model, the hunter and the prey, the trick and the john. In the end, Setting the Lawn on Fire is also something rare-a fully realized, contemporary romance that illuminates the power of desire and the rituals of the body, the brain, and the heart that attempt to contain our passions. show lessTags
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Author Information
2+ Works 140 Members
Awards and Honors
Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Setting the Lawn on Fire
- Original title
- Setting the Lawn on Fire : A Novel
- Original publication date
- 2003
- Epigraph
- The median age of pubescence for girls has been found to be thirteen years and nine months in New York and Chicago.
- Vladimir Nabokov - Dedication
- For Kate
- First words
- It's the first day of school, third grade.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)I am one of them.
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Statistics
- Members
- 86
- Popularity
- 370,482
- Rating
- (3.38)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 1
