Buddy Cooper Finds a Way

By Neil Connelly

Book Overview

When you lose for a living, it's pretty hard to fail. Once, like all of us, Buddy dreamt of success. He and his wife, Alix, had just bought a new place, not too far from the beach. Their daughter, Brook, was out of the hospital. And the fans were cheering him on as the Invincible Man, one of the rising stars of the Southeastern Wrestling Confederacy. Then everything fell apart. An argument over Monday Night Football somehow crossed the line, Alix kicked him out, and Buddy moved in to the Motel 6. After that, winning just didn't seem right, so he traded in his golden cape for a latex mask and became one of the anonymous losers that fans love to hate. Every few weeks, he'd get a new mask, rechristen himself, and step into the ring to get beat all over again -- as the Grave Digger or the Widow Maker, the Deadbeat Dad or the Unknown Kentucky Terror. In the four years since the divorce, his record is 0-186, but that's okay by Buddy. Free of mad notions like happiness and success, he pops pink pills to control his rage and copes with his insomnia by watching John Wayne westerns and QVC. He has his job, his apartment, his truck, his once-a-week visits with Brook. Life as a failure isn't that bad, or so he's convinced himself. But now in an effort to boost pay-per-view ratings, Buddy's boss threatens a shake-up. As part of the plan, Buddy will have to end his safe days as a professional loser. He's actually slated to win a match. What he'll learn, though, is that like all new scripts, this one comes with its own cast and complications: a phone psychic living in fear, an alien-abductee with the secret to salvation, a championship match interrupted by a violent fanatic, what could be faith healings, and perhaps the most unlikely miracle of all -- a second chance to believe. A touching and wonderfully unpredictable literary debut about a professional loser who's forced into a rematch with life, Buddy Cooper Finds a Way announces the arrival of a fresh and original voice in American fiction.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0743274164
• ISBN13: 9780743274166
• Release Date: July 2005
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

Best book I've read in the last 5 years

This is the closest thing you'll find to Peter Gent's North Dallas Fourty novel. Absolutely enjoyable from start to finish, if I could find just one book like this a year...oh well! Savor this one.

Powerful as a flying elbow off the top rope...

Yes, Buddy Cooper Finds a Way is a meaningful work of fiction, but it also offers something far too rare in today's literature: entertainment. Want round, unique, interesting, developed characters? Great plot shifts? Twists and turns of desperation, of human imagination? Want action? Tenderness? It's all here. You won't find a hackneyed literary novel with lots of talk about art and no plot. But you will fall in love with Buddy Cooper, the long-time loser with a big heart. Connelly is a genius. He works pro wrestling, QVC, cultists, and Patrick Swayze into a novel full of beauty. He sets the planets in motion, and you will keep flipping pages to see if they align...or if they collide. It's a hell of a ride, and a rewarding one. Do yourself a favor and read it.

Quite Simply a Remarkable Book

If you think you have become jaded by the "strong character triumpths over life's adversity" themes in today's fiction, you are in for an amazing ride flying past the known boundaries that have been established by the common writer. Connelly simply removes the line between the real and surreal while guiding you through a man's shattered sense of reality and self as he tries to make sense of his world around him. The cutting humor brings you back from the dark recesses of human nature that Connelly explores just when you need it the most. Few writers are bold enough and talented enough to take us between the themes of killer asteroids and exploring what loss really is. Move this one to the top of your list.

Neil Connelly finds a way to rock the reader!

Buddy Cooper Finds a Way is an inventive, completely original novel that does not invite comparisons to anything that's being written today. In it, Connelly creates a world in which the hoopla of professional wrestling blends seemlessly with the insanity of daily life. It's a world that the reader can easily buy into, thanks to Connelly's tight, no-nonsense prose, his sharp eye for detail, and the wrestling lore that he expertly weaves throughout the narrative. The material is often hilarious, yet darker, more serious issues also permeate this many-layered work. Buddy is a fully-realized character; his situation is dire, his fate uncertain. Connelly has crafted a thoughtful, compelling, page-turner of a novel that will resonate on many levels. A must-read!

Heart & Vision

Prepare yourself for a rocket ship of a ride, fueled by brilliance and vision, through Buddy Cooper Finds a Way. Here you'll find alien graffiti, oracular lobsters, drive-by cavemen, and asteroids that fall from the clear blue sky. Neil Connelly's characters walk the same streets as us, yet they see the subliminal and sublime, and in every detail, no matter how funny or fiercely imagined, is the secret script of the human heart. How can a book be both startlingly new and timelessly wise? You'll find out when you turn the last page of this grand debut, and suddenly feel like it's always been with you.