Our Take
Some essay collections want to win you over with charm alone. Trick Mirror wants something harder: to make you a little uncomfortable, then reward you for staying. Jia Tolentino has a gift for starting with something specific and personal, then widening the lens until you realize she is really talking about all of us. The essays feel less like lectures and more like a smart friend thinking out loud, willing to implicate herself before she implicates anyone else. What makes it work is the voice. It is funny, quick, and precise, but it is also honest about its own blind spots, which keeps the criticism from feeling smug. Because the book covers a lot of ground, from the internet to ideals of self improvement to the stories we absorb about womanhood, not every essay will land equally for every reader. That is part of the pleasure, though. You will likely find one that makes you stop and reread. If you like this, you may enjoy Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist, which shares its mix of humor, cultural commentary, and personal candor. Zadie Smith's Feel Free offers another set of essays that move between culture and the self with real intelligence. And for a classic ancestor of this kind of writing, Joan Didion's The White Album shows how a sharp, personal eye can make sense of a confusing era. It is a smart pick for readers who like to think after they close a book, and a good one to read slowly, one essay at a time.
