Light House: A Trifle

Blurb

Light House: A Trifle, a 2000 satirical novel by American screenwriter William Monahan. Originally serialized in the Amherst literary magazine Old Crow Review from 1993 to 1995, Monahan sold Light House to Riverhead Books, a Penguin Group imprint, in 1998. Warner Bros. optioned the film rights while the novel was in manuscript and hired Monahan to write the screenplay adaptation. The novel was delayed for two years, with plans to release it alongside the upcoming film; however, the film was never produced.
In 2000, Light House: A Trifle was finally published and garnered critical acclaim: The New York Times proclaimed "Monahan's cocksure prose gallops along", and BookPage Fiction called Monahan "a worthy successor to Kingsley Amis". The story follows an artist named Tim Picasso who runs afoul of a drug lord and seeks refuge at a New England inn in the middle of a nor'easter. It is a work intentionally referential to the satirical novels of the early 19th-century British author Thomas Love Peacock, such as Headlong Hall and Nightmare Abbey.