The Portrait of a Mirror: A Novel

A stunning reinvention of the myth of Narcissus as a modern novel of
manners, about two young, well-heeled couples whose parallel lives
intertwine over the course of a summer, by a sharp new voice in fiction

Wes and Diana are the kind of privileged, well-educated, self-involved
New Yorkers you may not want to like but can't help wanting to like you.
With his boyish good looks, blue-blood pedigree, and the recent tidy
valuation of his tech startup, Wes would have made any woman weak in the
knees—any woman, that is, except perhaps his wife. Brilliant to the
point of cunning, Diana possesses her own arsenal of charms, handily
deployed against Wes in their constant wars of will and rhetorical
sparring.

Vivien and Dale live in Philadelphia, but with
ties to the same prep schools and management consulting firms as Wes and
Diana, they're of the same ilk. With a wedding date on the horizon and
carefully curated life of coupledom, Vivien and Dale make a
picture-perfect pair on Instagram. But when Vivien becomes a visiting
curator at The Metropolitan Museum of Art just as Diana is starting a
new consulting project in Philadelphia, the two couples' lives cross and
tangle. It's the summer of 2015 and they're all enraptured by one
another and too engulfed in desire to know what they want—despite
knowing just how to act.

In this wickedly fun debut, A.
Natasha Joukovsky crafts an absorbing portrait of modern romance,
rousing real sympathy for these flawed characters even as she skewers
them. Shrewdly observed, whip-smart, and shot through with wit and good
humor, The Portrait of a Mirror is a piercing exploration of narcissism, desire, self-delusion, and the great mythology of love.