Bøker av Antoine Wilson

'An enthralling literary puzzle... We have no idea where it is heading, right up to the shocking final sentence' New York Times A struggling author is stuck at the airport, his flight endlessly delayed. As he kills time at the gate, he bumps into a former classmate of his, Jeff, who is waiting for the same flight. The charismatic Jeff invites the author to drinks in the First Class lounge, and there, swearing him to secrecy, begins telling him the fascinating and disturbing story of his gilded life, starting with a pivotal incident from his youth... Alone on the beach one morning, Jeff notices a swimmer drowning in the rough surf - and so he rescues and resuscitates the unconscious man, before leaving him to the emergency services. But Jeff can't let go of the events of that traumatic day, and he begins to feel compelled to learn more about the man whose life he has saved, convinced that their destinies are now somehow entwined. Upon discovering that the man is the renowned art dealer Francis Arsenault, Jeff begins to surreptitiously visit his Beverly Hills gallery, eventually applying there for a job. Although Francis doesn't seem to recognize him, he nevertheless casts his legendary eye over Jeff and sees something of worth - and so he initiates him into his world of unimaginable power and wealth, where knowledge, taste and access are currency, and the value of things is constantly shifting, constantly calling into question what is real, and what matters. As Jeff finds himself seduced by the lifestyle, he pursues a deeper connection with Francis, until morals become expendable and their relationship becomes ever darker, leaving him to wonder... should he have just let Francis drown?

ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF 2022 * An NPR and Time Best Book of the Year * Longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize (Canada) * Finalist for CALIBA’s 2022 Golden Poppy Awards A successful art dealer confesses the story of his meteoric rise in this “powerful, intoxicating, and shocking” (The New York Times) novel that’s a “slow burn à la Patricia Highsmith” (Oprah Daily). “You’ll struggle not to rip through in one sitting” (Vogue).In a first-class lounge at JFK airport, our narrator listens as Jeff Cook, a former classmate he only vaguely remembers, shares the uncanny story of his adult life—a life that changed course years before, the moment he resuscitated a drowning man. Jeff reveals that after that traumatic, galvanizing morning on the beach, he was compelled to learn more about the man whose life he had saved, convinced that their fates were now entwined. But are we agents of our fate—or are we its pawns? Upon discovering that the man is renowned art dealer Francis Arsenault, Jeff begins to surreptitiously visit his Beverly Hills gallery. Although Francis does not seem to recognize him as the man who saved his life, he nevertheless casts his legendary eye on Jeff and sees something worthy. 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. The paths of the two men come together and diverge in dizzying ways until the novel’s staggering ending. Sly, suspenseful, and “gloriously addicting” (BuzzFeed), 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.

A novel about obsession that makes for obsessive reading.All Owen Patterson wants is an normal life, a happy marriage, and a stable family. But following the brutal and random murder of his brother-in-law, that dream is shattered. A year later, his wife is still in mourning and his in-laws won''t talk about anything but their dead son.The murderer, Henry Joseph Raven, has been put in prison, but as far as Owen is concerned, prison isn’t punishment enough. He embarks on a quest to "balance the scales of justice," writing letters to Henry Raven under the pseudonym Lily Hazelton. His plan: to seduce the murderer, make him fall in love with his fictional correspondent, and then break his heart. From one letter to the next, Lily Hazelton develops into a curious amalgam of details from Owen’s imagination, snatches of his difficult childhood, and memories of his cousin Eileen, a suicide who was his first true love. Not entirely in control of his own creation, Owen dives headfirst into the correspondence, only to find himself caught in the trap he’s set for Henry Raven.Bringing together an epistolary game of cat and mouse with the harrowing record of one man’s psychological collapse, The Interloper is a compelling and original debut from a bold new writer."As assured and sumptuously written as any first novel I’ve encountered—Antoine Wilson’s prose sings, and the story he tells here is both clever and compelling. This is writing at its very best." — T. Coraghessan Boyle