Review: The Portrait of a Mirror
Abrams Overlook Press, 2021
If there is such a thing as recursive novel, it is A. Natasha Joukovsky's The Portrait of a Mirror (Abrams Overlook Press, 2021). True to its name, it pins reader and author in a mutual reflection that is dazzling on the surface and successively unsettling in its depths.
On the surface, The Portrait of a Mirror is a searingly intelligent character-driven novel. It centers on four main characters – two power couples – who are, if not captivating, at least captivated by themselves and each other. Wealthy, clever, glamorous, they are the kind of people we despise not because they're so awful but because they're so archetypically perfect. The story details two love triangles that emerge between them. With scathing insight and delicious wit, we witness the would-be lovers tantalize and repudiate each other with panache. There is romance, there is comedy. But make no mistake, this is not a rom-com. It isn't even a love story. In its depths, it is a portrait. And ultimately a mirror.
Billed as a modern reinterpretation of the myth of Narcissus, the novel casts its gaze on contemporary selfhood. Two thousand years and we still gaze vainly at our image, only now we have Instagram, whereas Narcissus, poor fucker, only had a pool. Vanity today consists not of one perfect reflection, but thousands; for the novel's characters it also requires an illustrious career and a wedding in The New York Times. And yet none of it ever really satisfies. It's a timeless paradox: contriving to seem perfect to others ultimately prevents us from believing it ourselves.
Thankfully, the author is not so desultory as to leave the moral of the story there. Instead, we are treated to the loftiest heights of vanity, the apotheosis where vanity ceases to be shallow and almost gives way to the depths. We are treated to characters who, like us, harbor a secret desire to be seen as perfect, but unlike us are able to pull it off. Characters who aren't just vain pricks, but are absolute masterclass. Their need to be superior isn't cloying or pathetic. It's their birthright, and is so impeccably executed it is nearly an art form in itself. Their artifice becomes artistry. Their pretentiousness, perspicacious.
And herein lies the depth of Joukovsky's mastery. It is not just the characters in this book whose artifice is artistry, but the book itself – its storyline, prose, even the physical tome, the book as objet d'art. What may be said of its features may be said of the whole – and its characters, even its author and the reader, too. Those who fault the novel for being pretentious have missed the point. The Portrait of a Mirror is an object lesson, an impeccably executed case in point. The novel becomes an intricate portrait, with lines so precise and finely wrought that each brushstroke mirrors the reflection it creates. Were a portrait to be made of a mirror, it would happen to capture the artist and somehow also the viewer. That this work is not a painting but a novel, reading oneself into it isn't just a reader's exercise, but the point.
