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

Product Information

Split up into pairs and imagine you find yourself in Jeff and the narrator’s position: happening upon a person from your past. Imagine bumping into an old college friend and sparking up a conversation about what's happened since you last saw each other. It sat on my shelf until it was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, which prompted me to a) remember I even had a copy of it and b) make a mental note to get to it faster, because surely it must be worth reading if it had been longlisted. With puzzling urgency, Jeff divulges the strange story of how he once rescued Francis, a wealthy art dealer. We checked into the lounge at a marble counter, where an officious young man took my pass and waved us in, letting us know that they would be announcing when it was time for us to head down to the gate.

We stood awkwardly in the middle of the living room while a line of stoned residents deliquesced into the couch in front of us, eyes more wary than friendly. 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. Buuuuuuuuuuuut, I am a Hitchcock/Highsmith superfan and this slow rolling narrative reminded me of their films/stories and I became entirely enraptured. Much like he did for his characters, Wilson employs detailed descriptions of the Los Angeles art scene to make the atmosphere tangible.One would have never considered them friends back in the day but Jeff seems to think otherwise and delivers a wicked tale to his unassuming former classmate.

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 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. Consider if, instead of the narrator mediating Jeff’s story, Wilson wrote Mouth to Mouth only from Jeff’s perspective.

We don’t share your credit card details with third-party sellers, and we don’t sell your information to others.Jeff then proceeds to tell him what's happened in his life in the twenty or so years in which they haven't seen each other, beginning with how he saved the life of a drowning man and this action sent his life spiralling off in a direction he never predicted (or did he? The description of Cook performing CPR is incredibly visceral, exemplifying Wilson’s ability to appeal to the senses. I think authors who have found success are publishing longer books for sure (Margaret Atwood, John Irving, Fredrik Backman) but I can’t say that applies to everyone else. Writing in a near split-personality type structure, the story pings from Jeff’s telling of the story to the unknown-author’s perspective seamlessly and without any abridging or cutting of the building narrative.