Cooperative Lives

Patrick Finegan's luscious novel Cooperative Lives follows characters whose lives change when they are brought into close proximity with each other through a series of coincidences, accidents, and international espionage... The story moves forward and backward in time with ease, teasing forth details and offering clues about a deeper underlying story and tangled interconnections. The addition of an international conspiracy makes it tempting to turn pages at a rapid speed, but masterful prose, marked by evocative phrasing and apt metaphors, encourages savoring each exquisite sentence and its imagery... There's much to relish and ponder in this tragicomedy. Ambitious and sophisticated, Cooperative Lives is a diverse and gorgeous tapestry of character studies and is a pure delight to read. - Wendy Hinman, Foreword Clarion Reviews (★★★★★)

Happenstance, serendipity and luck dominate as the lives of characters crash against one another like pinballs in Patrick Finegan's Cooperative Lives. A novel that perfectly captures the unscripted events and coincidence of real life, where you can do your utmost best, and it's never quite good enough... A powerful, chic and evocative read, Cooperative Lives proves a superb début for Finegan and a must-read for discerning readers of top-notch literary fiction. It is recommended without reservation. - BookViral Reviews (Recommended Without Reservation)

Cooperative Lives is the most thrilling work of literature I've read all year. perhaps for many years. Through a collection of extraordinarily perceptive character depictions, Patrick Finegan evokes a complex plot of espionage, fiscal and medical malfeasance, lust and hapless coincidence that captures the essence of our times. This is not an easy book to read; it is best grasped through several readings-- as are the best of books. Not only are the characters drawn with sharp perception, each of the diverse settings and situations is presented with a deep knowledge of place and detail. This is a staggering work of research enlivened with great style and increasingly black humor. This is the US in the 21st century as formed by Caliban's god -- harrowing in its accurate vision. I hope Mr. Finegan is busy writing a sequel, I can hardly wait to see what he would do with the Trump era. - indieBRAG Judges' Commentary

The changes in point of view are often abrupt, but the reader who follows from person to person, lie to lie, and secret to secret will find themselves at the heart of a dark web that stretches well beyond the building to a case that almost seems ripped from the headlines of the late 2000s and early 2010s when this story takes place. While the author describes this work as extremely recent historical fiction, this character-driven story is most definitely a work of exquisite literary fiction that uses the exploration of its characters to drive the narrative. - Marlene Harris, Chanticleer Book Reviews (★★★★★)