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

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At the end of the novel, after an emotionally turbulent chain of events, Wilson seems to tie up all loose ends. And yet, the final sentence brings the conclusion into question: Did Cook leave the narrator with a lie?

SHAPIRO: Although, it's not like he's Hitler or Stalin. He's kind of a jerk and a bully and a philanderer, but he's not somebody, you know, who commits genocide or something. 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.” Michael Kimball first caught my attention in 1985 with Firewater Pond, a boisterously comic novel set in rural Maine and populated by an assortment of aging hippies, horny teenagers, and scheming, small town politicians. After much too long a silence, Kimball resurfaced in 1996 with Undone, a suspense novel that marked a major change of artistic direction. Now, a mere four years later, Kimball has published his third novel, Mouth to Mouth. It too is a suspense novel, and it's a beauty: a moody, brooding, Gothic account of murder, madness, and festering family secrets. Its strange and unsettling. We are left with an ambiguious message. The kind you want to discuss with someone.This is the fifth and final instalment of the Lakeside Hospital medical romance series and I think it is a great way to close this series. Cara Malone did it again and gave us a beautiful, heart-warming story. This book can be read as a standalone. It was he. But Jeff had had famously long, dark flowing hair, not this cropped salt-and-pepper business. Plus he’d put on weight, become more solid in the way so many of us did after college, continuing to grow into manhood long after we thought we’d arrived. ANTOINE WILSON: And this guy was walking along just air drumming - his eyes closed kind of thing. And he was on a collision course with a train, a full-size train.

Veronica an ER nurse just got her heart broken by her long term girlfriend and lashes out at Sarah who is secretly harboring feelings for her. A few weeks later, an accident, a text and a spa date later; Sarah has that chance to be more to Veronica. Ok that's a good start... How did we go from Sarah over extending herself for two weeks to them been together for months? There's barely any communication between the main characters, the build between them wasn't sufficient and who really leaves someone for wanting to be there for them? This book needed more depth and it just wasn't enough. 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. Someone should do that for us in economy,” I said. “You could fit a lot more people on every flight. Sardine style.” Alana: I try my best to practice gratitude for a book, as Judge Farah does. I appreciated her mention of poetry because learning to read poetry made me a better reader overall. I had a difficult time processing shorter texts, which I’d often speed through for the sake of it. Meave, does that ever happen to you? Mouth to Mouth" by Antoine Wilson is a fascinating literary novel. It explores the connection between rescuer and survivor and exposes buried secrets. There were many unanswered questions. Were Jeff and Francis good people? Were they users? Was the narrator truly the first person to hear the story? Were Jeff's recollections embellished based upon an audience? Was our narrator reliable? This thought provoking read is one I highly recommend.This was my first book by this Author and based on what I read I was expecting a lot more than a shallow u-haul thrope.

That's interesting because I believe in sincerity — but I also believe that we're limited in our ability to obtain any kind of truth." The nature of fate

By Lisa Moore

Does a candle have an expiration date? It may not come with one, but once past a certain point in its life, it is corrupted, even if it still burns. Mouth to Mouth is that rarity, a perfect narrative machine, working by its own laws. The cool nervous clarity of the prose enmeshes the reader in a trap of complicity, one snapping shut on narrator and reader at the same instant. Bravo.” —Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of Solitude By the end of the slim volume Antoine Wilson has made sure to wallop the reader with the realization that the story has been eerier than they ever realized." — Entertainment Weekly But the real heart of Mouth to Mouth is Kimball's painstaking portrait of a family collapsing under the combined weight of guilt, silence, and secrecy. As Neal proceeds with his schemes, he locates the fault lines in a damaged family that has more than its share of dysfunctional characteristics to begin with. As Ellen struggles helplessly against the tidal pull of events, her marriage flounders, her personal and professional lives slide simultaneously out of control, and her distant, incommunicative daughter drifts further and further out of reach. Kimball catches all of this with sympathy and precision, and the result is a powerful, sometimes desolating account of the destruction -- and partial reconstruction -- of a deeply vulnerable family. This, more than anything, gives Mouth to Mouth its emotional and dramatic center, lifting it well above the level of its numerous, less ambitious, competitors.

The second subject is Cook. Wilson cleverly tells Cook’s story in the third person, placing an unnamed character in the role of first person narrator instead. This distance between Cook and the narrator is crucial for allowing readers the space to question his morality. There is space for doubt to creep into their minds as to whether his motivations are genuine and virtuous. Readers are nudged even further toward suspicion when the narrator describes his skepticism and questions Cook’s reasoning, only to receive vague answers in return. Waiting for a flight at JFK airport lounge, two former classmates reunite, and one of them, Jeff Cook goes into a storytelling mode and shares a story that he has never told before. Its a story that changed the course of two lives, his and the man he saved from drowning. A] taut, compulsive chamber piece of a novel, which you’ll struggle not to rip through in one sitting… Mouth to Mouth is an elegantly told and supremely gripping tale of serendipity and deception—and delivers a brilliant ending that will leave you guessing about everything that came before.” Jeff is obsessed with his perceived goodness, and he provides few details that make Francis out to be anything other than an asshole. Do you think the novel makes a case for what makes a moral or corrupt person? How does it comment on the human condition?

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Rosecrans: At the end, the judge talks about wanting to feel transported. As librarians, what’s the most common reason you see for why people read fiction? As Cook talked the writer took on the role of confessor, his responses sympathetic and occasionally prompting. Not that Cook needed much prompting, he’s on a roll and seems determined to provide an unexpurgated version. 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. Without further thought, he launches himself into the water and swims out to the man. Having rescued him from certain drowning others arrive on the scene and eventually he’s left alone, with no knowledge of the identity of the man he saved. Initially this doesn’t bother him, he’s done a good deed and that’s all that matters. But after stewing in his own juices for a while his curiosity gets the better of him – he needs to know more. A] taut, compulsive chamber piece of a novel, which you’ll struggle not to rip through in one sitting… Mouth to Mouth is an elegantly told and supremely gripping tale of serendipity and deception—and delivers a brilliant ending that will leave you guessing about everything that came before.” — Vogue