Print: Mowin' the Heavenly Lawn
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 Mowin'
the Heavenly Lawn took me seven years, four word processors, seven
computers, seven apartments, three states and two-and-a-half girlfriends
to complete. Perhaps that's why I've elected to go the print-on-demand
route with this one. Quite frankly, I'm tired of thinking about it.
I
don't want to write any more chapter summaries or plot synopsiseseses...es,
and I don't want to go through more rewrites when the rejection form
letters
come in. I think it's a great book, and there's nothing more I can do
for it.
The story is told from the first-person point-of-view of Guy Lindsey.
Guy is just like the rest of us. He puts his pants on one leg at a time.
He watches a lot of professional wrestling. He dreams of Andy Kauffman.
He speaks with fire gods, gets busted for having sex under school buses
and is frightened of Victorian literature professors. Guy Lindsey also
once killed somebody. Hopefully, that's where the similarities end.
Mowin' the Heavenly Lawn follows two timelines in Guy's life: The
first tracks Guy from kindergarten up through high school when he commits
the murder, and the second takes place between his freshman and senior
years of college when he's finally able to confess his crime.
Although the storytelling style of Mowin' the Heavenly Lawn borrows
heavily from Kurt Vonnegut and Joseph Heller, the absurd, acerbic comedy is drawn
from the likes of John Kennedy Toole, Mark Leyner and Christopher
Moore.
And Benny Hill. For some reason, everything I write ends up back with
Benny Hill being chased across the British countryside by a gang of old
men and scantily clad police women. I can only hope my life will end
the same way.
Comments
"Great last line..."
- Megan Shult, Microsoft Corp.
"I am concerned about the libel potential, especially in the scene
about the pissed-on frat boy."
- Bud Smith, Ohio Northern University
"Uh...you didn't kill anyone in high school, did you?"
- Karen Bowen
"It was better edited than most books I've read recently."
- Colin Smith, Freeverse Software
The Missing Review
The following review was written by ONU English major Dena Dudzenski.
"Kirk Hiner's novel, Mowin' the Heavenly Lawn, perfectly
balances comedy and drama. Through the conversational tone of the
novel, the author draws in the reader from the first lines. The novel
chronicles the life of Guy Lindsey, an introverted college student,
and the trials and tribulations from his adolescence to his years
at small Floodbane College.
"Hiner plays on the reader's ability to sympathize with Guy Lindsey
because everyone knows a Guy Lindsey--the geeky, introverted type
that was prone to torment and insult. The opening lines set the reader
up for the actions that follow in the course of the novel: "My name
is Guy, and I once killed somebody." However, Guy does not reveal
the actual circumstances surrounding this life-changing incident
until the last fifty pages of the novel. Instead, through passages
of regression
and reminisces, Guy explains how certain events in his adolescence,
from being shot by a BB gun at Heath Millard's birthday party at
six-years-old to his first love, Ann Penella, to his obsession with
Pep-O-Mint LifeSavers, lead to his murder of another human being.
"Guy's experiences at Floodbane College seem in some ways to echo
certain aspects of Hiner's own years here at Ohio Northern. Hiner
draws the reader into the novel with his college humor and allows
them to experience every aspect of Guy's life. The climax comes late
in the novel in a way that is completely unexpected or previously
foreshadowed, thus taking the reader by surprise. Hiner keeps the
reader guessing as to what more could possibly happen to Guy Lindsey
from the first page to the last page of the novel."
Sample Chapters
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