Mouth to Mouth: ‘Gripping... Shades of Patricia Highsmith and Donna Tartt’ Vogue

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Not that Cook needed much prompting, he’s on a roll and seems determined to provide an unexpurgated version. His work has appeared in The Paris Review , Story Quarterly , and Best New American Voices, among other publications, and he is a contributing editor of the literary magazine A Public Space as well as the Los Angeles Review of Books . Time had passed, a part of my body was no longer in me, I had had a square shaved from my leg for some kind of circuit-completing electrode, but I was still I, obviously. Wish it had gone more into art world money laundering but that's only a really minor complaint because the novel's pretty much perfect as it is. 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.

More chitchat follows, the two exchange a couple of faded college memories, and then, with obvious calculation, Cook launches into the story — a confession, really — that will dominate the remainder of the men’s time in airport limbo as well as this brisk novel’s 65 chapters, some covering no more than a page. I felt that things had happened to me without my knowledge, which they had, of course, and I was left with the uncanny sense that I wasn’t the same person who had gone under.His work has appeared in The Paris Review, Story Quarterly, and Best New American Voices, among other publications, and he is a contributing editor of the literary magazine A Public Space as well as the Los Angeles Review of Books. In a first-class lounge at JFK airport, our narrator listens as Jeff Cook, a former classmate he only vaguely remembers, shares the uncanny story of his adult life—a life that changed course years before, the moment he resuscitated a drowning man. Spotting someone in difficulties, he went to the rescue of the swimmer who almost seemed to register him before being whisked off to hospital. The start point, and the key to all that follows, is his intervention one morning when spots a man in severe difficulty off Santa Monica beach.

I was thinking about how a sight that might consume our attention completely on the ground could, from another perspective, barely register as a blip on an enormous field, when I heard a name over the PA. As Jeff finds himself seduced by the lifestyle, he pursues a deeper connection with Francis, until morals become expendable and their relationship becomes ever darker, leaving Jeff finally to wonder…should he have just let Francis drown? Both are flying to Berlin and when their flight is delayed they sit in the first-class lounge and get caught up.A couple working as chauffeurs have been accused of stealing millions from the founder of Tin House Books. Eventually Francis came around, but would only tell people he’d broken the ribs in a “squash accident”. The book is less than 200 pages with some really short chapters, perfect for "just one more", and I found it absolutely mesmerizing. Cook, too, is aware that his story may be hard for his audience to believe, particularly because he admits to having never shared it with anyone before. The Financial Times and its journalism are subject to a self-regulation regime under the FT Editorial Code of Practice.

Funky eyeglasses, a striped jacket, and one woman’s cape made it clear to anyone who saw them that they were nonconformists, people of taste, art-world cognoscenti. The flight delay becomes protracted (they’re both booked on the same flight, albeit at different ends of the aeroplane) and as the two men talk on more of Cook’s story is revealed. 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.We hadn’t been friends, exactly, barely acquaintances, but Jeff was one of those minor players from the past who claimed for himself an outsize role in my memories. The whole way from gate to lounge elevator, as I followed him and the rhythmic ticktock of his bag’s wheels across the terminal’s tiles, he didn’t once look back to make sure I was following. Consider if, instead of the narrator mediating Jeff’s story, Wilson wrote Mouth to Mouth only from Jeff’s perspective.

At the end of the novel, after an emotionally turbulent chain of events, Wilson seems to tie up all loose ends.

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. While waiting, Jeff decides to unload his burden, his story of how he became so financially successful. As he confides, ‘I wanted him to be good, though, I wanted to feel that I had done a good thing not only for him but for all the people he came in contact with. That book’s follow-up, “ Panorama City,” is terrific — a deathbed chronicle from an eccentric man-child who, in the end, discovers he isn’t dying, after all. He’s a clever guy, the author, and I was constantly looking up words I didn’t recognise and references I didn’t understand the meaning of.