About this ebook
This is the story of THE VILLAGE WIT. American Richard Bentley settles in rural England, looking for the contented life of a bookshop keeper and some fun with the local women. Heath-on-the-Wold seems the ideal place to get lost in work and forget the woman who fell out his life with the affliction of "marital boredom." Bentley hires Peggy White, a mid-forties townswoman who seems his match in sass and intellect. Soon, the rules of attraction open a new chapter in their lives. Who wants power? Who holds the power?
THE VILLAGE WIT follows Richard and Peggy’s often humorous and sometimes dark odyssey through village life, love’s fall, sexual politics, and that place where memory and modern love-power-passion intersect. In the tradition of Iris Murdoch, Richard Ford, Margaret Atwood, and Norman Rush, THE VILLAGE WIT explores the effects of loss and the shadows found in passion's blood-red corners.
About the author
Mark Beyer was born and raised in the Chicago area. He wrote his first story at the age of five, which he called "The Giant Eye" and to which he added an illustration: a full-page size bloodshot eye with bat-like wings and the legs of an ostrich. From that time onward, his imagination grew.
In September 2010, he released his first novel, THE VILLAGE WIT. In 2012 his second novel was published, WHAT BEAUTY, a story of art, ego, and love. His third novel, MAX, THE BLIND GUY, is the story of a 40-year marriage. In September 2020, his newest novel, THE JANITOR: Or, DOSTOEVSKY IN AMERICA, was published.
One reviewer has written “Max, the blind guy brings to mind the work of his literary predecessors such as Nabokov, Marquez, Dickens, and Dostoevsky. Good company. Good reading." Another reader has said Beyer's prose writing is "like reading a classic."
He now makes his home in Europe.
