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 ONE OF BARACK OBAMA’S FAVORITE BOOKS OF THE YEAR •
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
