RaveEsquire... an exacting and dread-inducing story of suspicion, prejudice and hysteria, which unfolds like watching a play confined to a claustrophobic and sinister house ... Alam wrote the novel before the pandemic hit, and yet it feels so entwined with the DNA of 2020, capturing the hallucinatory quality which time takes on when stuck inside not knowing what the future holds ... gives a fascinating dissection of the diminishing white middle class ... a novel which has a cinematic quality to it, with the story bracing you for a jump scare with every rustling tree or squeaking door, conjuring the same creepiness as Jordan Peele\'s Us in which a holiday home is the setting for an invasion ... While Leave The World Behind nudges you towards the end of days, it knows true terror lies in the quiet wait for bad news as you ask again and again: what is going on?
Jia Tolentino
PositiveEsquireThe nine long-form essays don\'t have one single theme that binds them together, but often they present modern life as a con — a funhouse mirror that distorts and hides the truth ... The internet being terrible is a well trodden subject in non-fiction, but Tolentino is an expert on the topic, and she\'s at her best while dismantling online culture ... Finishing Trick Mirror has a disorientating feeling that stays with you, a low-level panic which is pinned down by the knowledge that attempts to change any of this are akin to rebuilding a house with the same old bricks.
