Funny you should say that,” Jeff said, as if he hadn’t just nudged the conversation in that direction. “I ended up in close proximity to one once. Not long after college, in fact, a year or so later. I was, through no planning or forethought on my part, responsible for saving a man’s life.” A fascinating contemporary twist on the classic ‘as told to’ novel, Mouth To Mouth strands two old accquaintances in an airport VIP lounge, where we are alternately charmed and alarmed by a fantastic tale of love, fate and a meteoric rise in the art world. Mesmerizing.”

A successful art dealer confesses the story of his rise to a former classmate in an airport bar – a story that begins with his rescue and resuscitation of a drowning man, with whom he will become inextricably linked, to disturbing ends. He smiled and took me in for a moment. “Hey, why don’t you join me in the first-class lounge? I’ve got an extra pass.” Wilson relates the story plainly but looks down as he continues. “He was missing for months. It was awful, the atmosphere so tense at home. There was a documentary made about it by John Zaritsky called ‘ Just Another Missing Kid,’ shown on a Canadian series called ‘The Fifth Estate,’ kind of like our ’60 Minutes.’” Jeff is obsessed with his perceived goodness, and he provides few details that make Francis out to be anything other than an asshole. Do you think the novel makes a case for what makes a moral or corrupt person? How does it comment on the human condition?What words would you use to describe Wilson’s writing style? How does his attention to detail impact your reading of the book and its ideas? Mouth to Mouth is a narrative with no trust, written in prose so controlled as to be unsettling. There is a chill to the book that arises not so much from the tension created, but from the placidity with which the characters (Jeff, in particular) face it. Reading the novel for the first time is like watching a man in shorts and flipflops walk casually down a snowy street. Odd, impressive even, but what is he trying to prove? SHAPIRO: I also know it's simplistic to talk about what a book is about with a capital A, but my sense of what this book is, quote-unquote, "about" just kept changing as I went through the book. And a lot has been said about the last sentence, which I'm not going to spoil. But up until the last sentence of this book, it's constantly changing. The narrator turns up at JFK for a flight that is now delayed. There, he runs into an old acquaintance from university called Jeff. 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?). This seems such a simple tale when you begin it but it isn’t. This is one to continue to think about and it kind of gets under your skin.

Our narrator begins to really wonder about Jeff. Why is he telling someone he barely knows, an acquaintance from college 20 years ago, this personal story he's never told anyone else? Or so he says... Jeff strolled up, two beers in hand. He put one in front of me, announcing that he’d found a nonalcoholic brew, and that he wasn’t sure if I drank them, but he thought it might make things feel more ceremonial—that was the word he used—for us to catch up over a couple of beers, alcoholic or not, for old times’ sake. We had never drunk together that I could remember, but I let it go. We clinked bottles and sipped, our eyes turning to the plane traffic outside. Change the plan you will roll onto at any time during your trial by visiting the “Settings & Account” section. What happens at the end of my trial? Mouth to Mouth is that rarity, a perfect narrative machine, working by its own laws. The cool nervous clarity of the prose enmeshes the reader in a trap of complicity, one snapping shut on narrator and reader at the same instant. Bravo.” —Jonathan Lethem, author of The Fortress of SolitudeMouth to Mouth is an intelligent, emotionally wrenching novel that does its work on more than one level. First of all, it is a tense, thoroughly professional thriller that becomes more and more absorbing as the narrative progresses. Kimball has the true writer's eye for character, action, and atmosphere, and his novel is filled with vividly constructed sequences -- a protracted drowning, a forbidden erotic encounter between Ellen and Neal, a staged conflagration in the Chambers's newly rebuilt barn, a climactic encounter in a frozen, flooded valley -- that are alternately frightening and hypnotically fascinating.

Meave: Gross! Maybe? I was so sure it was another fetishization-of-childhood-friendships stories, where a best friendship (…or more?) between two girls is warped into some mystery of femininity/adolescent girls—incipient lesbians???/ Heavenly Creatures folderol. I’m leery of adult characterizations of childrens’ relationships with each other—like, of course children have complicated friendships—but it so often comes off as reductive and overblown. I have engaged with my gender identity, but being cisgender always felt right. And having had some Intense inter-girl friendships of my own, I found the passage Judge Farah highlights, about every story having an expiration date, felt truer than most depictions of those relationships in whatever medium. To paraphrase our judge, I also found The Book of Goose more genuine, resonant, earned, and successful as the story unfolded. In my wife’s childhood home,” he says, “there are books about murder everywhere, and that has to do with character, who people are when faced with the highest stakes imaginable. But having experienced my brother’s murder? I still don’t love true crime.”Meave: I have trouble reading a lot of things? Usually excitement to find out what happens next causes speed reading and missed details, length of text regardless. As far as poetry, I prefer listening to it, even though I cannot focus on audio books at all. I didn’t mention that I was traveling on my own dime, hoping to capitalize on a German magazine’s labeling me a “cult author.” Or that I was also taking a much-needed break from family obligations, carving out a week from carpools and grocery shopping to live the life readers picture writers live full-time.