Trick mirror: reflections on self-delusion
(Book)

In this dazzling collection of nine entirely original essays, written with a rare combination of give and sharpness, wit and fearlessness, Jia Tolentino delves into the forces that warp our vision, demonstrating an unparalleled stylistic potency and critical dexterity. This book is an enlightening, unforgettable trip through the river of self-delusion that surges just beneath the surface of our lives. It is 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. The book gleams with the author's sense of humor and capacity to elucidate the impossibly complex in an instant, and is marked by her desire to treat the reader with profound honesty.