I enjoyed the overall story. However I didn't get on with the style of writing that seemed loaded with metaphors and references that I didn't always get.

I just couldn't do this book. Joukovsky's writing style is just over the top with vocabulary that is more than I could handle. Soooo wordy. Lots of words. After about 28% I gave up. The fault lies entirely with this reader.

Not a lot happened in the section that I read - there were incredibly sophisticated descriptions of everything. The chapters that were composed primarily of emails and texts were an interesting inclusion. However, I needed some sort of action to keep me interested, and it just wasn't happening. I did hate to give up, but I found myself skimming and I felt that wasn't fair to the book.

Thanks to NetGalley for letting me attempt this book.

The Portrait of a Mirror is a study in relationships. It’s an exploration of how everyone is a mirror. And when we fall in love with someone, we are actually falling in love with ourselves. We are projecting our own inner divinity onto them, to our detriment. How do we overcome this? By recognizing the other person for who they truly are, rather than venerating them as a kind of godlike version of ourselves.

"It was when Diana was at her most artless, when the unattractive realities of her humanness seeped to the surface, that Dale was most inclined to deify her in symbolic worship."

The story itself is about two wealthy couples from the right side of the tracks. You know the kind- those privileged elites that summer in Nantucket and own 3-5 houses and have their weddings featured in the New York Times and eat fast food to be ironic. It’s about the juxtaposition between the facade and reality. How you can appear to ‘have it all,’ and yet be miserable on the inside. Wes and Diana, Dale and Vivien are the quintessential example of this. They are the creme de la creme, the envy of of their social circles, living the American dream (and then some!). And yet they are overcome with grass is greener syndrome in the relationship department; prime candidates for the hit reality tv show, Wife Swap.

The Portrait of a Mirror is quite possibly the most pretentious book I’ve ever read. And this is coming from someone who has a very high threshold for ostentation. I certainly wouldn’t say that it detracts from the experience. In fact, I believe that pretentiousness is one of the book’s defining characteristics. It’s a stylistic choice that suits the characters and establishes Joukovsky as an expert, someone who has dipped her toes in that glamorous upper crust social strata and therefore is well-equipped to navigate us through it.

The prose is witty, challenging and scintillating. It demands that the reader keep up. I admire the fact that even though this book is character-driven (which I love), it still manages to proceed with purpose, anchored to a plot, building in intensity and excitement as it approaches the grand finale. On a side note, I absolutely adored Julian Pappas-Fidicia. He is haughty, flamboyant and hilarious and I wish we were best friends in real life!

If I had any criticism to give, it would be that some of the sections describing Wes and Diana’s work seemed unnecessarily long and would benefit from a little editing. I found my attention wandering during those scenes and they weren’t (in my mind at least) pivotal to the movement of the story.

The Portrait of a Mirror is an ideal choice for readers that enjoy character-driven contemporary fiction with snappy dialogue and romantic entanglements set against the stylish backdrop of New York City’s art scene. This is an impressive debut novel and I look forward to seeing what Joukovsky has in store for us in the future.

I received an ARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Okay, so, here's the thing: I believe this book will be gobbled up and wholeheartedly CONSUMED among publishing circles, literary critics, and art lovers alike. In fact, it may be one I would well recommend to people I know who fit any of the aforementioned categories.

But, to be real, I honestly don't know how to describe the mixed-bag of emotions I felt while reading this. First, the book was much different than I was anticipating. I was not expecting the pretentious-quippy-internal-monologue feel of the writing or the fact that nothing much actually happens in the novel.

This book seems like it is intended to mock rich white elites while also managing to feel like it is only relatable or completely understandable BY rich elites. I mean, that in and of itself is a portrait of self-reflection, though maybe not one the author intended. If it was the intent, then there are a lot of people who may not be able to vibe with this story and all its upper-crust references and upper-echelon nuances.

I think most of the things that frustrated me with the novel were the exact intent of the author (i.e. the pompousness, etc.) But my response is probably not what the author is hoping to elicit in her readers.

The ending was given away halfway through the novel, in a sarcastic comment made between two characters (SPOILER: Dale and Diana saying that it is cliche to end a novel with a wedding which inevitably means the novel will end with Dale and Vivien's wedding), and this pulled me out of the narrative and pulled the plug on my driving need to find out what would happen. You know instinctively that Dale and Vivien will marry and Wes and Diana will stay together. However, I needed to feel a sense of completion, circularity, or SOMETHING with Wes and Diana, but never did. Which led to a further sense of frustration, because if there is no closure on their marriage why should I care about it at all?

By no means do I think Joukovsky is a bad writer. On the contrary, she has some interesting things to say about the human condition, and some little revelations the characters had —or the reader has about the characters themselves— were flawless and very well executed. I have no doubts she could become a strong voice in literary circles. Yet, I struggled with the writing. Some sentences or description sequences felt overlong, wordy, or occasionally rambly for the sole purpose of making a witty point. Which, might be fine in a short story format but was grating while reading an entire novel. But again, at certain points in the narrative, I found the writing style to be spot-on and flow easily. I often felt this book suffered from telling and not showing anything that was going on. There is nothing inherently wrong with this. It worked for the story Joukovsy was trying to portray, but ultimately I just wanted more.

I'm not sure I've ever felt so conflicted about a book. Did I love it? No. Did I hate it? No. Did I feel indifferent towards it?....No? I had strong feelings about the book, I am just still not quite sure how to untangle them. Ultimately, being a lover of Greek myth and art-as-life, life-as-art style stories, I think I set my personal expectations too high for this one.

This book will fall into a genre of reads I classify as caviar — divisive in preference, but strong to all who spoon a gulp.

Some will find it both a snapping critique of the state of culture and illuminating examination of the self within it. Others will bypass the art oozing out of every page’s pore and simply read it as a haughty and pretentious sentence of the Narcissus-illiterate.

I fall into the former camp, but share the latter’s unlearnedness. But if you’re hungry to learn, Portrait is of textbook depth about art, yes, but predominantly about relationships. And because it’s dense in epiphanies, it will be one I revisit and reflect. Revisit and reflect. Revisit and reflect.

Captivating caviar.

Oh, I loved this! It’s a clever story with colourful characters and humour I was not expecting. Beautifully written, the language is almost verse-like in its construction. I loved the modern take on a classic but this book really can really earn its own place in the literary world.

There is a lot to recommend this novel: bursts of laugh out loud humor, irony, an engaging overarching metaphor, arch cultural criticism, and clever dialogue. I understand the author's choice of style with the ornate vocabulary and digressions, but it slows the plot to an absolute crawl in their length. The digressions are almost Aaron Sorkin-like, if Aaron Sorkin also did a mountain of blow before sitting down to write. Tighter editing of these passages could help the pacing and preserve the intent.

I feel as if I learned more about art than anything else with this novel, not that that is inherently a bad thing. It was well written and I enjoyed a lot of it.
I liked the ideas represented in the book and the exploration of them, through the focus on privilege.

There were some over-explanatory parts and the plot was a bit lacking. I also didn't get if the novel was making fun of wealthy, white liberals or just simply describing them. There were definitely parts of Julian's character (who apparently is a real life person and recreated in this book) that I found plain ignorant. It's not exactly funny he doesn't understand his racism is racism but maybe that's who this book is geared towards anyway?