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 lover: 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.

“Indeed, this brilliant first novel is a tribute to the power of a first-class imagination to rethink what has become a venerable genre—the coming out novel. To my mind, this is the best gay debut novel I've read in quite a long time."—Edmund White, Out

"The premise of this magnetic narrative is that consciousness is a sensory collage and that all biography is sexual biography. We meet Friedman's character in the chaotic impulses of early childhood, watch him gallop through the frustrated yearnings of adolescence and early manhood, and see him sacrificed to lust, adventure, and the market for sex. What finally emerges is a full-fledged human identity, the unmistakable proof that existence equals desire. Everything in this book is tinged with it, from the light on an Alaskan plain to sweat trickling across taut young skin. Friedman has discovered the magic link between libido and humanity, arousal and our taste for living, and he shares this with us elegantly, never losing his honesty, humility and respect for others."—Bruce Benderson, author of The Romanian: Story of an Obsession and winner of France's Prix de Flore 2004

"Who would have thought there were still stories about coming of age and coming out that were waiting to be told in America? Lawns are not the only things blazing in Friedman's audacious novel; libraries, locker rooms, basketball courts, medical photography, and fishpacking plants are also on fire. So are all the places, bodies, and fantasies assembled, like a collage, in this memory-inspired piece of fiction."—Thomas Waugh, author of Out/Lines