Customer Reviews

Light House

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Lighthouse kept me laughing out loud from the minute I picked it up until late the same night when I finished the book. I have long enjoyed WM's writings in New York Press and was happy to hear that he finally published a novel.

Lighthouse is a bizarre tale of Tim Picasso, the artist hero, who absconds with a bag of money belonging to a Miami drug lord. When everyone ends up in a dilapidated New England bed & breakfast, the result is a hilarious chain of events that gives no quarter to any of the pitiful characters.

It is truly refreshing to read a something that is so un-P.C. This is the best book that I have read in a very long time. Buy it, read it, laugh like hell. I can't wait for WM's next book.

This was an incredible piece of reading! All reviewers are correct...it is absolutely hilarious, in many ways. The funniest book I've read since Big Trouble (Dave Barry) and maybe even funnier.

It is about a cast of unlikely characters whose lives change dramatically one night at the Captain Admiral Benbow Inn. Each characters' life changes in a different way...although the circumstances leading up to each persons' change all affect how the other peoples' change, and well...it's just so brilliantly executed it's hard to explain, read it!

The character development is perfect...we get to see the lighter side of a wide variety of people, such as the artist Tim Picasso (basically the main character), the Miami drug runner/hitman Jesus Castro, the dysfuntional married couple Magdalene and George Hawthorne (also the innkeepers), the paranoid/schizophrenic writer Mr. Glowery (John Wong!), the mysterious guy in the lighthouse, Mr. Briscoe (who shows his true colors near the end....) and several others...

There are so many humor styles, one to fit everybody's humor "agendas...:" satire, slapstick, dry, witty, intelligent, crude, to name a few. One minute, you might be laughing at a witty literary reference, the next you'll be laughing at an explicit sexual joke, and everything between. Yes, there are some vulgarities, if you are too sensitive....you may be offended by parts. But do yourself a favor and give it a try, the rest of it is worth it.

There is never a dull moment...so many interesting and rioutous situations...from the Literary Workshop, to the Chinese Resaurant, to Briscoe's "escape" and more....leading up to a rousing ending, where there is an unlikely hero and characters go separate ways, and some interesting choices for "where they go!"

I am happy to read (in the jacket) that this book is already under contract with Warner Brothers for a movie. WB, do me a favor: don't mess this book up! If done right, this will be a hilarious film. I'm also happy to read that Monohan is working on his second novel. P>Also appreciated, is that it's short, compact, easy to read, yet intelligently written. Just a great book all around. Give it a try, nothing to lose!

Just when you thought modern fiction was going to be one interminable, anemic New Yorker short story, along comes William Monahan with guns blazing! He shoots down the foibles and pretensions of bloodless academics, Miami hit men, and all the rest of us with deadly accuracy. The characters and dialogue are so perfect that the defiantly wild plot is an extra added attraction. His rhythm is STARTLINGLY good ... Suddenly you remember what it's like to read a master of the lost art of writing. As we have, you'll find yourself collecting your own Monahan-isms...(gnome seign?) Whole sentences come back and make you laugh out loud in line at the bank. PLEASE READ THIS BOOK - You're in the hands of a REAL WRITER.

Warning: Do not read this book on an airplane. I sat between a guy reading the new Grisham and a fat woman reading Danielle Steele and started chuckling,,,then chortling merrily...then tears fell wetly and then they both shot their hands in the air to hit the call button. The stewardess cut me off from my gin and tonics but Picasso and company carried on anyway. The only other time I've laughed gin out my nose was while reading A Confederacy of Dunces....on an airplane. Well, and A Fan's Notes,,,on a beach chair....well and early John Irving but back to Light House, it's smart, funny and so un PC you can't help but look over your shoulder. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall in the editorial meetings over this book.

The only disappointment about this brilliant farce is that it ended while I was still laughing at the outrageousness of the characters and the situations in which Monahan placed them.

The author's hilarious disregard for political correctness is a case for taking oneself less seriously. His treatment spares no one, whether Wasp, warped individual, or ethnic composite.

This is a classic to be read and re-read in case you were too busy laughing and anxiously turning pages to appreciate the intellect and raw talent involved in the writing of this gem.

With the air and chaos of Confederacy of Dunces and Catch-22, this book keeps you laughing with its love 'em/hate 'em characters, its constant turn of unpredictable events, and the frequent familiarity to one's own psyche. From the first page to the last, it reads like a polluted city river one can't wait to dive back into.

I cannot wholly recommend this book -- it's too esoteric and bizarre, too many over-the-head references for the average reader. I didn't enjoy the writing until about page 40 of the paperback when I read about the aquarium situation. Then I laughed out loud to the point of crying. I read and reread several passages here, just to laugh. I laughed out loud again reading George's drive through the storm description. The strange writing style lends itself to the hilarity of the characters' various fates -- awful fates. I cannot imagine how this novel will be translated to the cinema, but also cannot wait to find out how the big screen will capture this story.

He's wacky and cerebral. He's outrageous, fey, and ingenious. He's William Monahan, author of Light House, a laugh-out-loud funny tale of the shenanigans at a rustic and rusty New England B & B.

Think "Fawlty Towers," "Saturday Night Live," the Keystone Kops, and the Three Stooges, then you have an approximation of the hilarious characters Monahan has created. Yet,, even his pathetic ne'er do wells and hallucinatory misfits speak biting truths from time to time.

Monahan has hit the jackpot in more ways than one with this debut novel - Warner Brothers bought the film rights. One can only imagine the hilarity provoked by Light House on a wide screen. Meanwhile, enjoy the book. It's one of the best Reads to be found.

Our protagonist is young Boston based Tim Picasso, "an intensely moral person without being annoyingly messianic." He has problems - he is greatly talented as an artist and extremely good looking, "which meant that quite a lot of people hated him automatically."

Thwarted in his artistic career by a jealous professor, Tim is broke and despondent. Cadged into joining a friend on the island of Tortilla, Tim inadvertently begins running drugs for underworld kingpin Jesus Castro. Finding the "criminal business" quite well-paying and "extraordinarily simple," Tim sets out on his life of crime, transporting the illegal from Miami to Boston.

When $1.5 million intended for Jesus falls into Tim's hands, temptation wins out. The handsome wannabe artist grabs the booty, runs, and lands in a forsaken New England village, Tyburn, where he finds lodging at the woebegone Admiral Benbow Inn which is owned and haphazardly operated by George Shakespeare, "an Anglophile of the foaming variety," and his unhappy wife, Magdalene, a failed dancer and actress.

Unbeknownst to Tim, he is being trailed by one of Jesus's men, Cesar Pilosi, a loden hatted extremely expensive private detective who eventually rents a room at the Inn as does Jesus himself.

Tim is not only surrounded by his enemies, but also eccentrics. Professor Menelaus G. Eggman, who has come to the Inn and Tyburn to run an amateur writer's workshop is also a somnambulist given to muttering gibberish during his nocturnal strolls. Mr. Glowery, a less than mediocre writer, arrives in Tyburn after pilfering other people's email addresses to write Amazon.com praising his own work and trashing everyone else's. He is convinced that a bestselling author is a fraud, and must be exposed as such to the world.

Edward Coffin Briscoe has been retained to renovate the nearby lighthouse, but his true desire is to wear women's clothes.

When a particularly vicious winter storm forces this cast of comedic characters to seek refuge at the Inn, Katie-bar-the-door for what happens next.

Highly original, mirth provoking, and intellectual, Light House is a winner on all counts.

- Gail Cooke

Here's a novel with symbols. Make that a novel with a light house, a drug dealer named Jesus (Castro not Christ), an artist named Picasso (Tim not Pablo), an Innkeeper named Hawthorne with a wife named Magdalene. And the Inn has no room due to a two-day intensive seminar in professional writing. That's almost required reading for the sophomore class. But, it's better than that! It's a strange book and a fun book. Never a dull or predicable moment. It's not hard reading. But, a good liberal arts education might help in understanding it.

The cast of characters includes a paranoid author who ends up dressed up as a pirate during a winter storm. It also includes a frostbitten crossdressing rapist on a boat. The story becomes increasingly frenzied while the winter storm builds, and all the characters, who have their own social and mental struggles, wind up in mortal peril.

That's what's appealing about this book - its craziness, and the author's wonderful use of langauge. Also, until the book became truly wild, the author's descriptions were enough to hold my attention. One character, Tim, "had never stolen anyting, really, and he never told lies, which, as far as Tim could tell, everyone else did almost constantly" (2). I love character descriptions like this.

Now, that's the plus side. On the minus side, I never really cared about any of the characters. At first, I thought I might be able to empathize with Tim, but I lost interest in him after a while. And, in the end, despite the author's great words, good humor, and wild story, I just didn't care enough about the characters for the book to strike me that strongly.

Why? The characters were too over the top. And, beyond that, they were too inhuman. There wasn't anything to ground them, no way I could easily compare their actions or thought processes to those of anyone I know. And that's really it; even strange books need a little reality.

But really, this book is fun. I laughed out loud at several different points. Books don't often make me laugh out loud.