Mao Game

by Joshua Miller

Book Overview

This is the story of Jordan Highland, a Hollywood child star whose life resembles the card game called Mao--a game in which only the dealer knows the rules. A heroin addict at fifteen, Jordan is estranged from his neurotic aging-starlet mother and the victim of his ex-pro football player father's bizarre sexual predilections. Having crashed and burned in the L.A. fast lane before he is old enough to drive, Jordan waits and watches as his mother and...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0380731827
• ISBN13: 9780380731824
• Release Date: October 1998
• Publisher: ReganBooks
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

Heartwrenching Neo-Gothic Masterpiece

Joshua Miller treats his subject matter with all the delicacy and tender precision of a surgeon; his uncanny proclivity for hypnotic imagery saturates this amazingly-first-time novel. Nothing escapes Miller's penetrating eye: not just the inner cores of women, sexuality, incest, drugs, and suicide, but even photography, the lives of painters and revolutionaries, and art and fashion styles of the early decades. Narrated in hauntingly sparse yet exacting prose, Jordan Highland's legendry is as potent as that of Holden Caulfield's or (Plath's) Esther Greenwood's. Above all else, his retainment of innocence and distinct lack of bitterness or jadedness are what truly ensorcel our hearts to the end. This novel creeps under your skin, sinks its teeth in most lovingly, and won't let go.

Beautiful, Haunting Prose

I'm absolutely shocked that this is a peice from a first time novelist. The psychadelic imagery and heart breaking plot weave through the pages like a symphonic masterpiece. Its one of my favorite books and I recommend it to anyone who is drawn to the styles of Sylvia Plath or J.D. Salinger

NEW YORK TIMES REVIEW

"Mao can be taken as a pointed metaphor for the uncertainties of life and miller does an admirable job of detailing JOrdan's own experience of those uncertainties in a quiet manner that is both highly observant and morbidly witty. Better yet, he does it without saturating his prose in a self-concious" NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW SEPTEMBER 21, 1997"Joshua Miller has succeeded in weaviving these sensationlistic elements into a vivd and affecting first novel about a young man's emotional deprivation-and his ultimate salvation." NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW SEPTEMBER 21st, 1997