Mouth to Mouth: Antoine Wilson

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From where I sat near the gate, I could examine this Jeff Cook closely, in profile. I had all but determined that he wasn’t the Jeff Cook I’d known and was going to turn my attention elsewhere, when he looked in my direction. I knew those high, broad cheekbones and that penetrating gaze. Now that we've finished all that, I just found myself wondering what the point was when it was all over. Not what was the point of the book, that was quite clear and as I mentioned it was effectively made. But why tell this story when it has, frankly, been told so many times already? This seems such a simple tale when you begin it but it isn’t. This is one to continue to think about and it kind of gets under your skin.

He smiled and took me in for a moment. “Hey, why don’t you join me in the first-class lounge? I’ve got an extra pass.” A story told within a story and one that at first glance may not seem all that interesting. It's an ARC I've had for months that I continued to pass over in my search of the next great book. Realizing that the publishing date was coming up soon I figured I could slip in one last novel into my 2021 reading journey and so chose Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson. What a surprise this was. I was absolutely captivated by this slow simmering story. Antoine Wilson writes with such eloquence it's to be admired. I should also mention that this book utilizes one of my favorite plot devices: Cliffhanging chapters, done perfectly! I would no sooner finish a chapter when that "just one more" mantra would start blaring through my brain. And that ending... Chefs kiss! 👌 Highly recommend! 4 stars! Francis Arsenault Fine Arts was located in Beverly Hills, Jeff recounted wanting to see the stranger whose life he saved. "I didn't want it to seem like I had come to collect anything...You don't save someone's life to collect a reward." If that be the case, why accept a job at the gallery and start to become indispensable to Francis? A flight delay from JFK to Berlin was perfect for passing the time conversing with a fellow passenger. They were barely acquainted as college students at UCLA, 20 years prior. Jeff Cook, smartly dressed for success, asked our narrator to join him in the first class lounge to await the Berlin flight announcement. Jeff was a successful art dealer. The narrator would be traveling to Berlin, at his own expense, to drum up interest in his writing.

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A novel about delusions of grandeur, and their deathly consequences: At JFK airport, the unnamed narrator, a writer, meets a former UCLA classmate who invites him to the first class lounge and feels compelled to tell him his life story. This sets in motion the story-within-a-story structure, in which we learn that the classmate, Jeff, has saved a man's life (via mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, but the book title of course also refers to oral storytelling), and then became obsessed with this very man, aiming to find out what he did with his second chance. Turns out the man is a wealthy art dealer named Francis, and Jeff wiggles his way into his life, becoming his assistant and dating his daughter. But Jeff is not all too pleased with the way Francis spends the part of his life he enabled him to have by saving him... Marooned at JFK in between flights from Los Angeles to Frankfurt, our nameless narrator hears a name over the loudspeaker. It’s Jeff Cook, a fellow UCLA alum who stands out in the narrator’s mind despite their barely being acquaintances. Formerly a “thrift-store Adonis,” Jeff now embodies a familiar relationship with luxury, and after a warm reintroduction to the narrator, he invites him to the first-class lounge. Seated by the window drinking the bar’s complimentary beers, Jeff begins to recount a dramatic turning point in his life. One day before dawn, fresh from a breakup with his college girlfriend, he drove to the beach, where he happened to see a man floating facedown and motionless in the early morning surf. He saves his life, and the man is whisked away by paramedics. Once stagnant, Jeff becomes fixated on the person he will learn is Francis Arsenault, a notorious, high-powered art dealer in Beverly Hills. His obsession leads him to a receptionist job at Francis’s gallery, setting off a series of favors, chance encounters, and deceptions that leave the narrator—and the reader—second-guessing all that came before. I presumed that he was one of those people who hated being alone. Perhaps if I’d been paying closer attention, or if I’d known what was to come, I’d have detected a glimmer of desperation in his eyes. I don’t know. Maybe it wasn’t there, not yet.

I've seen a fair bit of buzz about Mouth to Mouth and noticed that it received a positive review from Kirkus, but having read it now, I really don't understand why. Someone should do that for us in economy,” I said. “You could fit a lot more people on every flight. Sardine style.”

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Antoine Wilson is the author of the the forthcoming novel Mouth to Mouth, coming in 2022 from Avid Reader Press (Simon & Schuster), and the novels The Interloper and Panorama City, from Other Press and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, respectively. The unnamed narrator of this story runs into Jeff Cook, an old classmate whom he hasn't seen in a long time, at the airport. Both are flying to Berlin and when their flight is delayed they sit in the first-class lounge and get caught up. This reading group guide for Mouth to Mouth includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Antoine Wilson . The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book. Wilson relates the story plainly but looks down as he continues. “He was missing for months. It was awful, the atmosphere so tense at home. There was a documentary made about it by John Zaritsky called ‘ Just Another Missing Kid,’ shown on a Canadian series called ‘The Fifth Estate,’ kind of like our ’60 Minutes.’”

Such dilemmas are the engines of fiction. As for murder and all its entertainments, Wilson is understandably more ambivalent.This is the story of two old acquaintances meeting for a flight at JFK airport lounge. Jeff Cook will tell a story that happened to him and changed his life. One day on the beach he rescued a man from drowning. He performed the CPR on that drowned man (that’s the reason this novel is titled Mouth to Mouth). But later he gets obsessed with that man and has to know whether he rescued a good man or made the world a big disservice by letting a monster stay alive. I’m going to put it out there immediately that many people will not like this book. The premise here is our narrator runs into an old college acquaintance . . . It is a book that plays with the reader a little, which I always appreciate, the narration from Jeff being undercut regularly by our actual narrator, who comes to the forefront and then retreats again many times. It knows what it wants to say, it's efficient, and if it maybe hits the nail on the head a bit more than is my personal preference, it was never really going for subtlety anyway. Recommend if you enjoy character driven, human psyche, irony and identity themes. A lot to think about here. I was in the mood for something different but I didn't expect this short audiobook to be as good as it was! It starts slow, meanders for a while, and then it takes you to a surprise ending. I did not see that one coming!

He is a contributing editor of the literary journal A Public Space as well as the Los Angeles Review of Books. His fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, StoryQuarterly, Quarterly West, and Best New American Voices, among other publications.Mouth to Mouth is the story told to a writer whose plane is delayed. He notices a familiar face, a man from college days. Speaking the man’s name, he is surprised to be happily embraced as an old friend, as someone who knew him ‘then.’ The man takes him into the First Class Lounge and over drinks spins a wondrous tale of loss, unthinking heroism, and unsought riches. A tale of obsession and guilt. Jeff Cook says he has never told his story before. He was 19, and he was driving across the country to visit us,” Wilson says. “His Volkswagen bus broke down, and a couple of drifters helped him fix it in exchange for a ride. They stole the bus and murdered him because they didn’t want a witness to the theft.” Not your average psychological thriller. This one builds slowly but all-the-while doing so without the reader having any idea whatsoever where the story is going to end up. Telling the life of Jeff, is a wild ride through the seedy & manipulation-laden world of being an art dealer. literally nothing happened in this. the narrator meets his old classmate Jeff who tells him the story about how he saved another man's life, subsequently becoming obsessed with him and coincidentally✨ inserting himself into his life Mouth to Mouth tells the tale of an author whom awaiting his flight to Germany — amidst chasing a hole that he’d become somewhat of a Cult-status author, has a chance encounter with an old College acquaintance, whom winds up sharing a story of his life that throws the author and readers through a very eerily, strange yet poignant loop.