School Boards Want to Burn This Sweet, Uplifting Novel

Charges of “pedophilia” and immorality are bizarre

The New York Times Book Review calls Mike Muñoz “a Holden Caulfield for a new millennium,” and maybe that’s overhyped, but it’s not wildly off base. Mike is the quirky-cool protagonist of Lawn Boy, Jonathan Evison’s latest novel. Evison is pretty cool himself. His dialogue always crackles, his settings are so grounded in place and time you feel you’re there, and his voice morphs into something unique and special with each new book. He’s the kind of novelist we all wish we could grow up to become.

When Lawnboy went to print, I’m sure Evison never expected controversy, least of all that parents would storm school board meetings around the country condemning his story as “pedophilia,” calling it “sick,” and even “perverted.” Maybe he’s thankful, though. I am, because without the outcry, I would not have been so fast to to buy the novel, which became my favorite read of 2021.

More on the controversy in a minute, but first let’s talk about about Holden, err … Mike.

Mike Muñoz is a young man a few years out of high school, the son of a single mother, raised on a Washington State Indian reservation where poverty is a way of life. People call Mike a Mexican American because of his last name, but he doesn’t get it. His mom, the only family he has besides a developmentally disabled older brother, isn’t Mexican American. Mike doesn’t speak Spanish. The only thing he knows about Mexican food is that he almost never has money for Taco Bell.

When he can scrape a few pennies together, he takes his brother to a diner to chat up a pretty server who has a crush on him. Mike loves his nonverbal brother fiercely, but taking him out can be plenty embarrassing, especially when platters of food splatter up against restaurant walls.

Mike’s server friend doesn’t mind; she thinks he’s sweet to look after his brother, but he can’t see her admiration. He can’t see much of anything people find admirable in him. He can’t see over the limited horizons of his poverty and lack of opportunity. Still, he keeps trying, vocalizing a rich internal life and a struggle to make sense of the senseless.

He doesn’t see that for other people, a certain glow sets him apart for better or worse. Mike loves to work, and he’s very good at what he does, landscaping with a crew of mostly undocumented Mexican immigrants — cutting grass, edging lawns, and trimming bushes for a tiny wage that barely lets him contribute to the lot fee his mom has to pay to keep a trailer roof over the family’s heads.

Mike dreams of topiary, of carving bushes into lifelike sculptures of animals, of giving beauty to at least a small portion of Bainbridge Island near Seattle. He rarely sees the great natural beauty that surrounds him. Evison does a masterful job bringing the island and the reservation to life, throwing us glimpses of its natural splendor through Mike’s eyes, even as Mike tries not to focus on squalor.

Mike encounters a cast of vivid characters who think much more of him than he thinks of himself. Some offer genuine friendship, most take advantage of his naivete. Even people several steps up the economic ladder from Mike are struggling, a fact he grasps intuitively as he works out how to understand them rather than to judge them for using him.

Con men, petty criminals, and kindly intentioned losers surround Mike, all of them looking for whatever they can take from him. One of them is an ex-childhood friend turned realtor who Mike sees as a local celebrity. His face is on billboards, he drive fancy trucks, and he throws money around in elaborate schemes to escape his own poverty. When he gives Mike a job that includes hobnobbing with the country-club set, he forces Mike to confront cynicism, to decide who he is and who he will become.

Rather than giving into despair in the face of an unjust world, Mike reaches up and out. I won’t give the ending away, but it’s sweet and positive and powerful in the same understated way Mike’s love for his disabled brother is sweet and powerful.

As for the controversy, who would have seen it coming?

The Washington Post says, “Jonathan Evison takes a battering ram to stereotypes about race and class in his fifth novel, Lawn Boy . . . Full of humor and lots of hope . . . An effervescent novel of hope that can enlighten everyone.”

That’s it in a nutshell.

This novel is neither liberal nor conservative, neither Red State friendly nor Blue State friendly. Whatever you might think about race and class, good ole Mike Muñoz probably shatters a few stereotypes. Capitalism might not come off looking beautiful in this novel about a young man on the fringes, but that ending … if it’s not a celebration of the “by-your-bootstraps individualism” Ronald Reagan praised, nothing is.

So what’s the controversy?

Somebody. In. The. Book. Is. Gay.

Well, two characters are gay, which you won’t know until the final pages. (Don’t worry, no spoilers here. It’s safe to keep reading.) I didn’t see the gay part coming until just a few pages before Evison spilled the beans, but I finished the book with a warm smile on my face. I think you will too, no matter your sexual orientation or take on LGBTQ politics. Lawn Boy isn’t a political book. It’s a book about love, hope, family, genuine friendship, and the beauty of human potential in the face of adversity.

As for the charges of pedophilia driving people to call for book burning? I don’t get it. I’m not giving anything away by mentioning that Mike reveals in the first pages that he and the real estate agent engaged in sexual experimentation, once, when they were both children. He goes into no detail, but the fact of it angers him later in the story’s timeline.

You’ll have to read Lawn Boy to learn why this minor plot point becomes significant, but if you do, you’ll learn that “pedophilia” is a wildly inappropriate charge. Perhaps the wanna-be book burners should pick up the novel and actually read it.

The controversy drove me to read more Jonathan Evison, whose fine writing I already admired. I hope it will you too.

James Finn is a former Air Force intelligence analyst, long-time LGBTQ activist, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, a frequent columnist for the LA Blade, a contributor to other LGBTQ news outlets, and an “agented” but unpublished novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected].

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