One of the 'Best Books of 2013.'
—Slate, Flavorwire, Largehearted Boy, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, LitReactor
"To read Jeff Jackson’s Mira Corpora is to enter into a trance state. A hypnotic, brutal, and lyric exploration of youth, trauma and the construction of memory, this novel is like nothing I’ve ever read before and is, unquestionably, one of my favorite books published this year."
—Laura van den Berg, Salon
"A piercing howl of a book. Slyly seductive and utterly gripping ... [Jackson's] prose practically crackles and sparks. This punk coming-of-age story smolders long after the book is through."
—Slate
"Style is pre-eminent in Jeff Jackson's eerie and enigmatic debut. The prose works like the expressionless masks worn by killers in horror films."
—Wall Street Journal
"Episodic yet suspenseful, smeared with gutter detritus yet glittering with right-on apercus, the novel delivers both jolts to the spine and food for thought."
—Bookforum
"A gutter punk Catcher in the Rye."
—Shelf Awareness
"What’s most compelling—and terrifying... is the originality and execution. [Mira Corpora] has a very cinematic quality to it, like the dreamscapes of a Lynch, or, better, a strange, filmic mash-up of Lord of the Flies, Demian, and House of Leaves, as directed by Harmony Korine."
—Impose
"[A] mesmerizing debut, which reads like some cross between Bruno Schulz and the backstories of random characters from Penelope Spheeris’ 1984 film Suburbia. It’s the overarching sensibility that also puts Mira Corpora in a unique group of books that can only be dubbed Punk Lit. "
—Flavorwire
"It's fine work in its manic pacing and its summoning of certain cultural emblems. Present tense with a vengeance. I hope the book finds the serious readers who are out there waiting for this kind of fiction to hit them in the face."
—Don DeLillo
"Jeff Jackson is one of the most extraordinarily gifted young writers I've read in a very long time. His strangely serene yet gripping, unsettling, and beautifully rendered novel Mira Corpora has within it all the earmarks of an important new literary voice."
—Dennis Cooper
Mira Corpora is the debut novel from acclaimed playwright Jeff Jackson, an inspired, dreamlike adventure by a distinctive new talent.
Literary and inventive, but also fast-paced and gripping, Mira Corpora charts the journey of a young runaway. A coming-of-age story for people who hate coming-of-age stories, featuring a colony of outcast children, teenage oracles, amusement parks haunted by gibbons, mysterious cassette tapes, and a reclusive underground rockstar.
With astounding precision, Jackson weaves a moving tale of discovery and self-preservation across a startling, vibrant landscape.
Jeff Jackson holds an MFA from NYU and is the recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Five of his plays have been produced by the Obie Award–winning Collapsable Giraffe company.
