Trick Mirror

Reflections on Self-Delusion

By: Jia Tolentino

Narrated by: Jia Tolentino

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “From The New Yorker’s beloved cultural critic comes a bold, unflinching collection of essays about self-deception, examining everything from scammer culture to reality television.”—Esquire

Book Club Pick for Now Read This, from PBS NewsHour and The New York Times • “A whip-smart, challenging book.”—Zadie Smith • “Jia Tolentino could be the Joan Didion of our time.”—Vulture

FINALIST FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE’S JOHN LEONARD PRIZE FOR BEST FIRST BOOK • A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE CENTURY • AN OPRAH DAILY BEST NONFICTION BOOK OF THE PAST TWO DECADES

NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY AND HARVARD CRIMSON AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review, Time, Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post, NPR, Variety, Esquire, Vox, Elle, Glamour, GQ, Good Housekeeping, The Paris Review, Paste, Town & Country, BookPage, Kirkus Reviews, BookRiot, Shelf Awareness

Jia Tolentino is a peerless voice of her generation, tackling the conflicts, contradictions, and sea changes that define us and our time. Now, in this dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays, written with a rare combination of give and sharpness, wit and fearlessness, she delves into the forces that warp our vision, demonstrating an unparalleled stylistic potency and critical dexterity.

Trick Mirror is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. This is a book about the incentives that shape us, and about how hard it is to see ourselves clearly through a culture that revolves around the self. In each essay, Tolentino writes about a cultural prism: the rise of the nightmare social internet; the advent of scamming as the definitive millennial ethos; the literary heroine’s journey from brave to blank to bitter; the punitive dream of optimization, which insists that everything, including our bodies, should become more efficient and beautiful until we die. Gleaming with Tolentino’s sense of humor and capacity to elucidate the impossibly complex in an instant, and marked by her desire to treat the reader with profound honesty, Trick Mirror is an instant classic of the worst decade yet.

FINALIST FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD FOR THE ART OF THE ESSAY

Amaze!

His Tolentino gives an absolutely wonderful reading performance. “Trick Mirror” is a chewy and thought provoking book.

Would recommend!

Trick Mirror is, first, a memoir through lenses of Tolentino’s considered self scrutiny and measured self praise. This also acts as the narrative backdrop for questions to the modern condition, especially through a feminist slant. I enjoyed her slick use of literature to help add perspectives in each chapter, though it did at times read like a thesis paper (albeit an excellent one!).
My major gripe is that through her meditations on feminist theory and it’s affect within our online culture, after repeatedly pointing to herself as a beneficiary of this equation, she still sort of lands on the “getting my bag” feminist brand and doesn’t introspect much further on it in herself despite her own necessary criticism of it in others. She also not-so-subtly points to her casual drug use at multiple points, which would be relatable if not for the fact that it just really was not.
Ultimately I enjoyed the book, and find Jia to remain as a forward-leaning thinker/writer as all the hype has claimed. Will definitely still read anything by her, and recommend this volume for anyone looking to get a valuable review of the country as we now know it.

I am blown away!

WOW WOW WOW! This book is like a hug of information and validation. It’s like someone’s head opened and spewed out what I feel and how much I’ve read, but do not know how to organize. Incredible! I didn’t want it to end.

It's mixed for me.

I love a lot of the messages Jia delivers in this book - and there are some truths nestled in here that are important ones everyone should hear.

That said, the pacing and organization was a bit off for me. At times it felt like rambling, directionless. I wish it had been a little more neatly assembled. It would have been easier to focus on. A few times I had to re-listen to chapters, unsure of how I ended up where I did. But maybe she intended it to be this way.

Astute Observations from a very talented writer

I found this book of essays a highly compelling listen with articulate, whip smart observations about modern life. Here Jia Tolentino explores the modern foundation of 21st century self-hood in various forms (as a woman, a woman of color, a millennial, a post-reality TV star, a person on social media).

Tolentino possess both a deep introspective view on our current struggles as well as being able to bridge the sentiment with such philosophical observations as the presentation of self in the social media age to the trouble of often finding yourself in the YA literature cannon to the cult of the difficult woman in a time of #MeToo.

Tolentino's prose also does this with such a grace and often comic dead calm as well that it brings to mind the way Joan Didion's White Album could clinically cite the exact mileposts that were taking us out of the free love 60's to the cynical 70's. For Didion, the Manson family trials marked the end, and for Tolentino it would be the "7 scams" that defined the Millennial generation, from the Fyre Festival to the election of the 45th president. She is very data driven in many of her articles, citing studies that back up the feeling of either chilling dread or optimism on a given subject, some of which leave you feeling overwhelmed, some hopeful that a young talented writer is at least calling these things out.

Her narration also has a steady, calm, near-broadcast journalist quality that you could practically visualize the words and sentiment behind the essays. Definitely worth a listen!