Trick Mirror

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 "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 - 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

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 "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 - 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

A Times book of the year A Guardian book of the year ‘Magnificent’ The Times ‘Dazzling’ New Statesman ‘It filled me with hope’ Zadie Smith What happens to our behaviour when we live most of our lives online? What does it mean to ‘always be optimising’? And what is it about scams and the millennial generation? Offering nuanced and witty reflections on feminism, reality TV, the internet, drugs, identity and more, Trick Mirror is a multifaceted, thought-provoking and entertaining response to our zeitgeist – a must-read for anyone interested in the way we live and think today.

A Times book of the year A Guardian book of the year ‘Magnificent’ The Times ‘Dazzling’ New Statesman ‘It filled me with hope’ Zadie Smith What happens to our behaviour when we live most of our lives online? What does it mean to ‘always be optimising’? And what is it about scams and the millennial generation? Offering nuanced and witty reflections on feminism, reality TV, the internet, drugs, identity and more, Trick Mirror is a multifaceted, thought-provoking and entertaining response to our zeitgeist – a must-read for anyone interested in the way we live and think today.