Beta: a novel

by Jeremy Cooper

Life is double-plus-good for the quintessential nice guy, Silas Cleaver, whose primary ambition is to be a net positive for this world. However, Silas is an innately curious human whose mindfulness beckons him to search for a deeper meaning to this proposition of life. While stumbling upon forbidden territory in the periphery of consciousness, he begins to question the nature of his reality and terrestrial purpose. With the guidance of his unhinged and zany father, Chuckles, he’ll embark on an expedition into the tenebrous depths of his psyche to search for the truth, but he’ll soon wish to forget what he finds.

191 pages, Paperback

Published November 30, 2024

About the author

Jeremy Cooper is a writer and art historian, author of six previous novels and several works of non-fiction, including the standard work on nineteenth century furniture, studies of young British artists in the 1990s, and, in 2019, the British Museum's catalogue of artists' postcards. Early on he appeared in the first twenty-four of BBC's Antiques Roadshow and, in 2018, won
the first Fitzcarraldo Editions Novel Prize for Ash before Oak.