RaveThe New Statesman (UK)Tolentino\'s] work is marked by forensic attention, generous insight, a tone that is both conversational and lavishly descriptive, and an absurd, sparkling sense of humour crystallised by the internet’s heavy layers of irony and meta-jokes ... Here, her challenge is more daunting: from the outset, this is a book that promises contemporary American politics and culture as its subject. These essays, spanning memoir and criticism, are distinct from her journalism as a result. Though still crammed with startlingly precise sentences, they are longer and more discursive, tangential and unexpected ... Tolentino is deeply and rightly pessimistic about our current era: \'this feverish, electric, unlivable hell.\' ... Trick Mirror has a deep understanding of the sick pleasure of pressing a spectacular, marbled bruise, and the compulsion to do it again and again ... The book is saved from being bleak by two things. One is, of course, Tolentino’s sense of humour. No opportunity for a good joke goes unused ... The other is a sense of wonder at the beauty and the gentleness of life that occasionally intrudes on the narrative like a dazzling but uninvited guest ... Though only ever glanced at, with admirable restraint, these moments add depth and a personal stake to the terrifyingly astute analyses of a distinctive, lasting voice.
