Lawnboy by Paul Lisicky

Remember those days of adolescence when it seemed you would never understand the way the world works, never be able to communicate with adults, and never be worthy of love? When you tried so hard to please without really knowing what people wanted? When you felt unwanted, unlovable, and incompetent? When there was nothing to hold onto because you hadn't developed enough of yourself to find an inner anchor? Those are the days of all our lives that this book is about. Paul Lisicky tells the story of Evan's coming of age with compassion, wit, and a good deal of memory of a period in life most of us would prefer to forget. Those too familiar and too painful times, the mistakes which loom so large, the world as a place of extremes, tragedy vs. ecstasy, terror vs love; when we are trying for intimacy, anticipating rejection, and second guessing the facial expressions of parents and friends, because as yet there is no experience from which to glean the peace of perspective. This is Evan's life as we meet him at the age of 17. We follow his journey as he reaches out to his first lover, his mother, his brother, another lover, all unsuccessful attempts to connect. Yet Evan has resilience, an ability to come back to people with whom he feels frustrated to try again. Three quarters boy and one quarter man, he trudges with doggedness to change the balance. He is saved by his sensitivity, by his ability to observe and to appreciate the rich passionate natural beauty of Florida which helps him build his eventual place in the human stream. His character suffers all the slings and arrows outrageous fortune can throw and adolescence and we remember and suffer with him. Much of the book is funny and some reviewers have referred to it as sometimes hilarious. Somehow the memory of the pain was too much for me to laugh as often as others did. Perhaps I have not gleaned the amount of perspective I should have, nearing sixty, and perhaps that is one lesson of the book for me. Evan can tell what is important, but he doesn't know he has that ability, so he has to become increasingly aware of it over time as he returns often to what he knows best. And he does it without the benefit of higher education, which he rejects as somehow artificial and lacking in the direct experience he needs to grow. The book is a journey we have all taken regardless of sexual preference because we all search for love, acceptance, and our place in the world. Evan's steps are hopefully persistent and always gripping. How will he ever grow up? How did we? Was it all an accident that we finally found our way? What do we have by way of inner resources? How do we know when we get wherever it is we want to go? Yikes. Did we actually survive that whole era? Lisicky has a wonderful facility for description. You can feel the humidity of Florida, the foliage, the combinations of odors decay and perfume, the sunsets and palm trees rustling in the warm wind. Evan notes these aspects of the natural world even in the throws of a breakup with a lover or a fight with his mother. In the end it is his attunement to nature that carries him through and into the adult world. This book is best read in one sitting I think because the flow is continuous from one event in Evan's life to another. I did not want to put it down, I needed to find out what happened. The action and the adventure are all within and as suspenseful as any blockbuster. I was Evan for the course of the book and that was painful, frustrating, funny, and sad, but not a bit boring. One note: I read this book just after reading Still Life with Oysters and Lemons by Mark Doty. Lawnboy is dedicated to Mark Doty who notes at the end of his book "To Paul Lisicky who inhabits every sentence." There are some similarities, especially when Lisicky discusses objects in everyday lives. As his brother tosses old clothes to the dump, Evan wonders: "Didn't he understand that things could be more than themselves? Wasn't that why we honored them, hoping to reclaim them: little emblems of change, loss?" I imagined that this reverence of approach to the small parts of our lives was something these two men must have discussed many times.