Mouth to Mouth

This was a fun little book. If you have a trip coming up where you want to read a whole book on a flight, this would be a good choice. It’s smart and fast-pacedIt was pitched to me (by an Instagram follower) as an art world thriller, but I wouldn’t really call it a thriller… more, suspenseful fiction? I really liked the storytelling structure: the narrator is a writer who tells us someone else’s story as it was told to him. We never learn the narrator’s name (or even very much about him) but one day he is sitting at the airport, waiting for his flight, when he runs into an old classmate… Jeff Cook. Jeff is clearly living a very glamorous life – he’s well dressed, flying first class, etc. He and our narrator sit down in the first class lounge and Jeff proceeds to tell him a wild story: one day he was out for a run when he saw a man drowning. He saved his life, and then later, out of curiosity, tracks down the man – only to find out that it is Francis Arsenault, a famous Beverly Hills art dealer. Through a series of events (Jeff applies for a job at Arsenault’s gallery), Francis takes Jeff under his wing, teaching him everything he knows – all the while (or at least so it seems) never recognizing Jeff as the man who pulled him from the water and revived him. The men’s lives continue to intertwine, resulting in a dramatic ending. I really enjoyed this one and will be thinking about it for a while. Order on Bookshop.org or Amazon.