num_pages: 160
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 that sees passion from every angle because its protagonist is every kind of 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.
language: English
title: Setting the Lawn on Fire
titlecomplete: Setting the Lawn on Fire
genres: LGBT, Gay
ratings_count: 50
awards: awardedAt: 1104566400000
name: Lambda Literary Award
category: Gay Debut Fiction, awardedAt: 1136102400000
name: The Publishing Triangle Award
category: The Edmund White Award for Debut Fiction
publisher: University of Wisconsin Press