A Mouth Like Yours

by Daniel Duane

A brutally honest novel about love and illusion from the author of Caught Inside

Cassius Harper, ambivalent child of the seventies, is leading a modest and respectable life in San Francisco's flush he has a promising doctoral thesis, a doting new lover, the company of old friends and adoring parents, even a rent-controlled apartment by the beach where he's surfed all his life. So why the upwelling of nameless dread? Why the regret after cocktail parties and the road rage and, worst of all, the certainty that he is somehow a stranger to himself? Harper has always seen transformative love as the heart's salvation; but he's found his elusive ideal only twice, with miserable consequences. A Mouth Like Yours tells of a third and grand collision, with the vulnerable, volatile, and addictive Joanie Artois.

So quickly does Harper lose himself in Joanie, so thoroughly does she colonize his heart, that he sets out to understand why, exactly, love always unmans him this way. Exploring what carnal love can do for us and what it cannot, A Mouth Like Yours is a poignant statement about the growing pains of a generation.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Daniel Duane is the author of two novels and four books of non-fiction, including the memoir Caught Inside: A Surfer’s Year on the California Coast. He hosts the Sony Music podcast Reunion: Shark Attacks in Paradise, a co-production of HyperObject Industries and Little Everywhere. Duane has written journalism about everything from politics and food to rock-climbing and social justice, and for publications ranging from The New York Times Magazine to Wired, GQ, Esquire, Outside, and Bon Appetit. Duane won a 2012 National Magazine Award for an article about cooking with Chef Thomas Keller and has twice been a finalist for a James Beard Award. Duane holds a PhD in American Literature from UC Santa Cruz and has taught writing for the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, University of California Santa Cruz, and the MFA program at San Francisco State University. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the writer Elizabeth Weil, and their two daughters.

Reviews

[Jeannie · Rating 1 out of 5]

I finished the book, because I really hate not to, and because I kept thinking there would be a point. I didn't like the story or the characters. Even though the book was rather short, it just seemed to drag on forever. Personally, I found some of the content distasteful. I won't read more from this author - he can write, I am just not interested in trying again.

[Patty · Rating 1 out of 5]

Maybe it's because I just had a fight with my husband, but I didn't get past page 25 of this book. I thought the protagonist to be such spineless, womanizing wanker that I didn't care if he lived or died.

[June · Rating 1 out of 5]

this might be the worst book i have ever read.

[Peter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some parts work remarkably well. Others drag and delay

[Claire · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book about infatuation - good in parts but very repetitive

[Charlie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Disappointing. Couldn't get into this one.