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Mowin' the Heavenly Lawn
ISBN: 0595236839
Format: Paperback, 398 pages
Publication Date: September 2002
Publisher: Writers Club Press
Edition Number: 1
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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. That's why I elected to go the print-on-demand route with this one. Quite frankly, I was tired of thinking about it. I didn't want to write any more chapter summaries or plot synopsiseseses...es, and I didn't want to go through more rewrites when the rejection form letters come in. I think it's a great book, and there was 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 dark tone is influenced more by the music of Andy Prieboy and Wall of Voodoo. 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.
Reviews
"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
Chapters 1-3 (309K PDF)
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The sample chapters are available for download in PDF format. Viewing and printing them requires Adobe Reader, which is available as a free download from Adobe Systems. |
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