Book 6 of 52: Mouth to Mouth by Antoine Wilson

The narrator of Antoine Wilson's Mouth to Mouth is an unnamed, middling writer waiting for a flight to Germany after taking a a red eye from Los Angeles to JFK. While sitting bleary eyed in the terminal, he hears the name "Jeff Cook" over the loud speaker. He went to college with a Jeff Cook, though he didn't know him that well. He was kind of person whose circle overlaps yours but you don't know well, but since you see each other over and over and over again, becomes part of the background of your college experience.

It's a common name - could it be the same Jeff? It is, and he's waiting for the same flight, which is delayed, so he brings the narrator into the first class lounge with him. Over the course of the delay, Jeff tells the narrator what has happened to him starting not long after graduation, which lead to him being the kind of guy who only flies first class.

Told in this round about way (the narrator relays Jeff's story, switching between telling it from the time Jeff experienced it, and them talking in the first class lounge), Wilson gives the story a layer of suspense that wouldn't wouldn't have existed in a more traditional format. Plus, since it's Jeff's version of the story, which he tells as he proceeds to get drunk, we as readers (and the narrator too) can't be sure if he's telling the truth.

It's an odd little book, only 178 pages with short chapters, and some of those chapters are less than a page long. I wasn't sure where Mouth to Mouth was going until the very last line. Wilson perfectly holds the tension until the very end, which I can't say about any other novel I've read in recent memory.

Linda Holmes of NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour (and the delightful novel Evvie Drake Starts Over) recommended this one, which is where I first heard about it. I'm glad she did.

Like this post? Buy Jen a cup of coffee.

Disclosure: Bookshop.org links are affiliate links.

Comments

Welcome Back to Book a Week with Jen!

Hello hello! Yes, the rumors (that I started) are true. On New Year's Day, I fired up the old Book a Week with Jen blog, gave it a new domain, and I'm going to be writing about my reading habits once again. If you don't know me, my name is Jen A. Miller , and I'm a freelance writer and author. I've been freelancing now for 17 years, and in that time, have written hundreds of articles, three books ( two about the Jersey Shore and one about running ), and two ebooks ( both about freelance writing ). If you're not new around here, wow a lot has changed. I wrote a memoir , picked up a regular running column for the New York Times , and put that back down again. I ran a lot of marathons, and got into ultra marathoning, which lead me to run my first 24 hour race on New Year's Eve/New Year's Day 2020/2021 . My first dog, Emily, died in 2017 . I sold my first home, lived out of my car for a year traveling the country , scooped up a scruffy cattle dog mix in Ida

Book 5 of 52: Stormy Weather by Carl Hiaasen

I don't always try to match my reading to what I'm doing, but when I go to Florida, I try to pack at least one Florida weird book. There was no better novel to bring with me to read on a ferry from Key West to Dry Tortugas National Park , than Carl Hiaasen's Stormy Weather . Hiaasen was writing about #floridaman before #floridaman was a thing (and when this - # - was the pound sign). Stormy Weather is set in 1992 in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew, which is still the most destructive hurricane to have ever hit Florida, and only one of four hurricanes to make landfall in the U.S. still at Category 5 strength. According to the Miami Herald , Hurricane Andrew destroyed 63,000 homes and damaged another 101,241. Such disasters bring out the best in humanity but also the worst. F raud flowed into South Florida in Andrew's wake . That's where Stormy Weather comes in. From an advertising executive who yanks his new wife away from their Walt Disney World honeymoon to r

Book 11 of 52: The World Without Us by Alan Weisman

In my travels, I've accumulated photos in what I call the "Plants Where They Shouldn't Be" series. They're of weeds, flowers and trees growing in places that look uncomfortable: poking out of lava that's OK to walk on but warm enough to generate steam, growing around a mile marker on the road, sprouting on the back of a parking sign - that kind of thing. On the cheesy side, they're reminders that we can flourish in the most unlikely circumstances. On a more realistic end, they show that humans are constantly battling back nature, and that someday we'll probably lose the fight. I thought about those photos when I read book 8 of 52 Station Eleven (and watched the HBO Max adaptation ), which show a world without 99.99 percent of our current human population. The story focuses on people, of course, but set them in a world where the things humans have created - electricity, internet, buildings, bridges, roads - are being taken back by nature. A Jersey Sh

Book a Week with Jen

Search This Blog