Mouth to Mouth

Wilson, Antoine. Mouth to Mouth. New York: Avid Reader 2022. Print.

First Sentences:

I sat at the gate at JFK, having red-eyed my way from Los Angeles, exhausted, minding my own business, reflecting on what I'd seen the night before, shortly after takeoff, shortly before sleep, something I'd never seen before from an airplane.


Description:

Reading Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson was a bit like overhearing a storytelling session with Shahryar, the fictional Persian king as he listened to Scheherazade tell her 1,001 tales to her little sister Dunyazad. Like Shahryar, Mouth to Mouth's unnamed narrator raptly listens to and records for us a long story told to him by a vaguely-remembered college acquaintance. 

 

The well-dressed storyteller, Jeff Cook, and the listening scruffy narrator have a chance meeting in the Los Angeles airport while waiting for their flight to New York. Over drinks and snacks in the first class lounge, Cook unravels a secret he has been carrying for years, one that completely changed his life.

 

Early one morning while walking on a California beach, he relates, Cook noticed a swimmer gesturing from the water, then not moving. He swam out to the man who was now floating face down, struggled to pull him to shore, and then, when he saw the swimmer was not breathing, administered a clumsy CPR, pushing on the swimmer's chest (breaking some ribs) and somehow blowing life back into the victim's blue lips.

 

After the swimmer is helped into an ambulance for the hospital, Cook, then a scraggly-looking figure, was ignored and forgotten by everyone at the scene. But as the swimmer was hauled off by EMTs, Cookthought he saw the victim make eye contact from the stretcher and even tried to wave to Cook with his strapped down arm. 

 

So what were Cook's next choices? Walk away as the anonymous do-good lifesaver? Or find the swimmer and introduce himself? And what did Cook really want? Recognition? Thanks? Money? He admits he was very confused until he decided to try to find the swimmer. 

He was not even sure why he was pursuing this course of action and what the consequences might be, but tracking down the swimmer became his goal. What followed after Cook found the swimmer is completely unpredictable, a wild ride of mystery, skulking around, love, art, and, of course, plenty of lies.

 

Early on, Cook had hinted to the listener that his life story was full of risky chances, missed opportunities, and decisions made that now are viewed with regret. The narrator once even asks Cook:

"If you [Cook] could zero out everything that got you here, to this moment, you really would?

He nodded

"Everything you've just told me about?"

"Without a second thought."

I was completely involved as the listener/narrator recorded Cook's long, sometimes sorrowful, often rambling tale about his past. At the end of each short chapter, I was anxious to hear more, just like Sharryar following Scheherazade's tales. What would happen next? Who else might become involved? What consequences would be faced by Cook and others in this chase after the swimmer? And how would it end? I was kept guessing until the very last sentence of the tale, a twist that makes Mouth to Mouth an even more deliciously-tempting read.

It's a quiet story, a mystery, a thriller, a love story, a series of questionable decisions, and a morality play about the pitfalls and consequences encountered in the pursuit of an all-encompassing  goal: to understand the truth about who the drowning swimmer was and Cook's ultimate role in his life.

 

Happy reading. 

 

Fred

About The First Sentence Reader blog

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If this book interests you, be sure to check out:

Highsmith, Patricia. The Talented Mr. Ripley.   

A young man is hired to report on the activities of a wealthy man's son living in Italy. But Ripley begins to envy the son and becomes obsessed with a scheme to kill the rich son and take his place in the life of luxury.  (previously reviewed here)