Book Review: Trick Mirror by Jia Tolentino

I wasn’t familiar with Jia Tolentino when I requested this. I was intrigued by the title, cover, and blurb. When I started reading, I was a little worried I was falling into some sort of Millenial-takes-herself-too-seriously world, one in which being on a reality show as a teen meant she thought she should be an arbiter of pop culture and that this somehow earned her chops as a *real* thinker/writer/personality.

Wow, was I mistaken.

I thoroughly enjoyed this collection of essays, finding them thoughtful and provocative and very well written.

Tolentino may have started out on her path to fame in a way that made me roll my eyes (sorry!) but somewhere along the way she developed a keen sense of herself, her generation, and the world around her – and her ability to translate that sense into language that is engaging, thought-provoking, and brutally upfront about the realities of being a woman in the modern world caught me off guard.

This was a marvelous collection of essays – I’ve talked her/the book up to my step-daughter, who is also a young woman making her way in this hot mess of a contemporary world we find ourselves in, and think she could do way worse in finding a guide along the way. True, there were a few eye-rolling moments (Tolentino, as is the case with so many writers who expound on the nature of the world around them, occasionally takes herself a wee-bit too seriously), but on the whole I found this to be a powerful collection of thoughts on the way the world looks – and works…

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for my review copy.