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Summary and Reviews of Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison

Lawn Boy by Jonathan Evison

Lawn Boy

by Jonathan Evison
  • BookBrowse Review:
  • Critics' Consensus (5):
  • First Published:
  • Apr 3, 2018, 320 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Mar 2019, 320 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

Lawn Boy is an important, entertaining, and completely winning novel about social class distinctions, about overcoming cultural discrimination, and about standing up for oneself.

For Mike Muñoz, a young Chicano living in Washington State, life has been a whole lot of waiting for something to happen. Not too many years out of high school and still doing menial work - and just fired from his latest gig as a lawn boy on a landscaping crew - he knows that he's got to be the one to shake things up if he's ever going to change his life. But how?

In this funny, angry, touching, and ultimately deeply inspiring novel, bestselling author Jonathan Evison takes the reader into the heart and mind of a young man on a journey to discover himself, a search to find the secret to achieving the American dream of happiness and prosperity. That's the birthright for all Americans, isn't it? If so, then what is Mike Muñoz's problem? Though he tries time and again to get his foot on the first rung of that ladder to success, he can't seem to get a break. But then things start to change for Mike, and after a raucous, jarring, and challenging trip, he finds he can finally see the future and his place in it. And it's looking really good.

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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

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Evison's prose is sharp, and the situations he describes (such as an ill-fated occupation of a Walmart and an even less well-advised anti–puppy mill protest outside a pet store) offer opportunities for broad humor. But he also clearly cares deeply for the characters about whom he writes, and Lawn Boy is also a profoundly humanistic and hopeful novel at its core. Young Mike is an idealist – and readers - adults and young adults alike - will be rooting for him to upend the systems that seem to conspire to keep him down. Funny, romantic, and big-hearted, Lawn Boy just might be the Great American Landscaping Novel we didn't know we needed...continued

Full Review (548 words)

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(Reviewed by Norah Piehl).

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Beyond the Book



Great Topiary Gardens

Mike Muñoz might be a magician with a mower and a wizard with a weed whacker, but his real talent is topiary. If, like Mike, you thrill to see people, animals and mythical creatures carved from living trees and shrubs, here are a few great public topiary gardens to add to your itinerary.


Levens Hall, Cumbria, England
Levens HallRegarded as perhaps the oldest topiary garden in the world, the layout and design of this country estate's 100-piece topiary garden has remained largely unchanged since it was originally planted in the late seventeenth century.

Montreal Botanical Garden, Montreal, Canada
Montreal Botanical GardensTechnically called "mosaiculture" rather than topiary, the botanical sculptures at the Montreal Botanical Garden consist of plants grown on two...

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