Light House Book

Light House is not a novel for the culturally illiterate. Its sentences loop with gratuitous references and even more gratuitous jokes, all courtesy of former Spy editor William Monahan. Now defunct, Monahan's former employer used to publish the monthly Spy List, a litany of random cultural phenomena, which induced hilarity in the initiated and left everyone else feeling cross. Thankfully, this fictional debut strikes a happier balance: that is, more hilarity, less crossness. The protagonist, Tim Picasso, is a young artist of genius who stumbles into a life of crime. Excelling in his new career, he ends up stealing a million dollars from Miami kingpin Jesus Castro. Tim flees, finding his way to a Massachusetts bed-and-breakfast called the Admiral Benbow. Innkeepers George and Magdalene are thrilled to have such a handsome (not to mention paying) guest. And with the introduction of this loathsome couple, the author begins to fire with both guns: "Tall, lank-haired, bespectacled, George went shambling off toward the telephone in the lobby, wearing what Magdalene more or less privately thought of as his cuckold's cardigan." (That "more or less privately thought" is a typically snarky and attractive touch.) The next batch of guests is a group of fiction workshoppers, with whom Monahan makes free. He mocks everyone in the book, but you get the sense that he really hates these literary pretenders. "Joel Josh O'Connor was a writer of moderate technical gift," we are told, "who was capable of imitating everything, no matter how various in style (which does not, week to week, denote uncommon range), that he had read in the last issue of The New Yorker." The Miami contingent appears on the scene soon after, and Monahan has a good (if racially insensitive) time sending up their thuggery. He does stray occasionally into his old, inside-joke territory: "'You shoot this guy, and I never respect you no more,' said Mr. Castro very seriously, in a line written in 1991 and published serially with cult success in 1994 without winning anything the way some people apparently did with it." This kind of thing makes most sensible people very tired. Still, by the time a nor'easter blows the lid off the place, Monahan's delightfully silly novel has earned its absurd, roof-raising conclusion. --Claire DedererRead More