Buddy Cooper Finds a Way - by Neil O'Boyle Connelly (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

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.

Review Quotes

Adam Johnson author of "Parasites Like Us" Prepare yourself for a rocket ship of a ride, fueled by brilliance and vision, through "Buddy Cooper Finds a Way." 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.

Antonya Nelson author of "Female Trouble" Neil Connelly bravely tackles, in adult terms, the abiding cartoon world we live in, full of action figures and superheroes, mayhem and majesty. This book is funny -- funny ha-ha and funny strange, funny fantastic and funny profound.

Harry Crews author of "Body" You'll never be quite the same again after reading "Buddy Cooper Finds a Way." Funny, bitingly accurate, dead on target, and as startling as a slap in the face, this novel introduces a writer to watch.

Robert Olen Butler author of "A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain" Neil Connelly brilliantly mixes the comic and the serious, the real and the surreal -- and he does so while still creating richly believable and sympathetic characters. "Buddy Cooper Finds a Way" clearly establishes Connelly as one of our finest young writers.

Ron Carlson author of "A Kind of Flying" This is that lyric and antic thing that has one part over the line and one part over the top and just when you think you've figured it out as a high-octane amusement, Neil Connelly deals in the other part, Buddy Cooper's big, rueful heart, and the novel opens into a true thing. Buddy Cooper is looking for a sign. His search is dear pleasure.

Tim Gautreaux author of "The Clearing""Buddy Cooper Finds a Way" is literary fresh air, a touching, comedic look at a professional loser we can root for. The prose is expertly executed and tight, at turns showing inventive and ambitious plotting, as well as poetic, beautifully-paced language. This one's a winner.

ZZ Packer author of "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere" Neil Connelly's pitch-perfect novel is an entertaining, thought-provoking exploration of one man's determination to adhere to his own home-grown recipe for failure even as Providence grants him a final chance at success. Connelly is a wordsmith with a satirist's dead-on aim and a humanist's all-encompassing vision; in short, he's a writer deserving of our admiration, respect, and, most of all, awe.

Antonya Nelson

author of "Female Trouble"

Neil Connelly bravely tackles, in adult terms, the abiding cartoon world we live in, full of action figures and superheroes, mayhem and majesty. This book is funny -- funny ha-ha and funny strange, funny fantastic and funny profound.

Harry Crews

author of "Body"

You'll never be quite the same again after reading "Buddy Cooper Finds a Way." Funny, bitingly accurate, dead on target, and as startling as a slap in the face, this novel introduces a writer to watch.

Tim Gautreaux

author of "The Clearing"

"Buddy Cooper Finds a Way" is literary fresh air, a touching, comedic look at a professional loser we can root for. The prose is expertly executed and tight, at turns showing inventive and ambitious plotting, as well as poetic, beautifully-paced language. This one's a winner.

ZZ Packer

author of "Drinking Coffee Elsewhere"

Neil Connelly's pitch-perfect novel is an entertaining, thought-provoking exploration of one man's determination to adhere to his own home-grown recipe for failure even as Providence grants him a final chance at success. Connelly is a wordsmith with a satirist's dead-on aim and a humanist's all-encompassing vision; in short, he's a writer deserving of our admiration, respect, and, most of all, awe.

Adam Johnson

author of "Parasites Like Us"

Prepare yourself for a rocket ship of a ride, fueled by brilliance and vision, through "Buddy Cooper Finds a Way." 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.

About the Author

Neil O'Boyle Connelly, well-acquainted with losing from his days as a high school wrestler in Allentown, Pennsylvania, teaches fiction in the M.F.A. program at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana.