Great Escape

My Life in the Looking Glass

Reflecting on my childhood fear of mirrors

Illustration: renald Louissaint

I was seven and already on my way to becoming a neurotic, bookish kid. I had only recently learned how to read the words in the volumes piled helter-skelter on shelves, spilling out of cardboard boxes in closets, the collapsing columns of tomes on the floor. I could not have pronounced many of the…