Mouth to Mouth

Our narrator hears Jeff Cook, a former classmate he just dimly recalls, recount the strange tale of his adult life in a first-class lounge at JFK airport. The life he led altered years earlier the moment he revived a drowning man.

Jeff says he felt that their futures were inextricably intertwined after that horrific, inspiring morning on the beach, and he felt driven to find out more about the guy whose life he had spared. However, do we control our destiny or are we just its pawns? When Jeff learns that the guy is famous art dealer Francis Arsenault, he starts going to his Beverly Hills gallery covertly. Despite Jeff's apparent lack of recognition as the guy who saved his life, Francis nonetheless gives Jeff his famous glance and sees something deserving. He takes the younger man under his wing, initiating him into his world, where knowledge, taste, and access are currency; a world where value is constantly shifting and calling into question what is real, and what matters. Up until the shocking conclusion of the book, the two men's paths intersect and diverge in the most disorienting manner.

Sly, suspenseful, and engrossing, Mouth to Mouth masterfully blurs the line between opportunity and exploitation, self-respect and self-delusion, fact and fiction—exposing the myriad ways we deceive each other, and ourselves.