In her 2023 release Doppelganger, Shock Doctrine author Naomi Klein undertakes a sweeping analysis of Western society through the era and aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic. As its title suggests, Doppelganger utilizes the psychological and literary concept of the “other self” and, by extension, the “mirror world,” to draw together threads as ostensibly disparate as vaccine skepticism, online self-marketing, antisemitism, and environmental collapse. The doppelganger motif is undoubtedly the defining characteristic of the book, and the extent to which Klein’s critique coheres will inevitably depend on the reader’s judgment of its value as a framing device.

The genesis of Doppelganger, according to Klein, lay in her bizarre experience of being repeatedly, publicly, and confidently mistaken for another famous Naomi – rockstar feminist turned alt-right aunt Naomi Wolf. Klein uses this experience of conflation, and the strange spectacle of Wolf’s downward spiral, as her entry point into a world of “mirror politics” characterized by paranoia and projection. At the same time, she ponders the boundaries of the “authentic” self and “inauthentic” double, in a time when authenticity has become a marketable commodity and life itself a kind of open-ended resume.

Klein is at her clearest and most convincing when swimming in these waters. The section of the book discussing personal branding online draws weight from Klein’s reflections upon her career, as well as her unwanted entanglement with Wolf. Wolf’s story combines similarly well with Klein’s exploration of the larger alt-right ecosystem in which she participates. Through Wolf, we get a glimpse into both the functioning of the “mirror world” – how it takes real issues, inverts them, and dials them up to a hundred – and of the appeal this alternative sphere presents to the disenchanted denizens of our “real world.”

As the book progresses, the forms of “doppelganging” Klein cites become somewhat more abstract, metaphorical, and at times, tenuous. Beginning with clear instances of identity obfuscation and reality mirroring, her focus shifts outwards to a dissection of the larger forces that shape our societies for the worse. There is nothing objectionable in these later sections – they remain insightful, well-researched, and at times, moving. However, the doppelganger motif begins to feel less helpful as the pages go by, recurring more out of commitment than ongoing analytical benefit.

It is not inaccurate to describe, for instance, the historical othering of imperial subjects as a kind of mirroring. However, this conceptualization does not feel wholly necessary, nor does it connect back to the other forms of “doppelganging” Klein identifies in the way her placement of them together implies. When discussing the state of online politics in the 2020s, Klein’s doppelganger analysis seeks to name something quite unique and uncanny in our present historical moment. When she tries to extend the concept back hundreds of years, she undercuts this specificity, and begins to relabel ideas that are already well understood in other terms. Indeed, the late introduction of “shadowlands” as a concept comes almost as a concession that Klein’s “doppelganger” theory has outlived its usefulness.

On the one hand, I wonder whether a tighter focus might have allowed the book’s sharper insights more room to breathe. On the other, I recognize that such a narrowing would certainly have undermined the activist ambitions of the book. If this was a sacrifice Klein was unwilling to make, I can hardly fault her. The issues she arrives at towards the end of the book are weighty, consequential, even existential. Perhaps Klein calculated that a little messiness was a fair trade for the chance to get everything off her chest.

One feature that may test the durability of Klein’s book is its preoccupation with the Covid-19 pandemic. Doppelganger is a “Covid book,” and not just because it devotes so much focus to the societal impact of the pandemic. The book is highly personal and reflective, weaving together Klein’s own pandemic anecdotes with her larger social observations to provide a top-to-bottom stocktaking of the Covid era – how it changed us as individuals and how it changed the culture we all inhabit. Even in form, the book embodies the lockdown experience of so many, flitting between periods of intense self-reflection, distraction through media, and descent into online rabbit holes.

At times, this works to the book’s advantage. Klein’s focus on the pandemic provides some much-needed connective tissue between the diverse topics she discusses, and allows her to intersperse her own story without these digressions feeling self-indulgent. Yet at other times, it feels as though Klein places undue emphasis on the pandemic as a pivot point for social upheaval. Covid-19 did drive many ostensibly reasonable public figures off the deep end, but so did, for example, the 2016 US election before it, and the ongoing moral panic around trans people after. Covid-19 did facilitate a shocking upward transfer of wealth, but that train was also well and truly on the tracks. When we were in the throes of those early years – 2020, 2021, even 2022 – the pandemic really did feel like a once-in-a-generation, paradigm-shifting event. A few years on, however, it has begun to look more like another, albeit rather large and ugly, domino.

Notwithstanding these reservations, Doppelganger remains an engaging, informative, and often compelling work. For every minor complaint one might raise regarding the book, there is just as much to recommend it. Klein’s authorial voice is defined and persuasive throughout, delivering pathos when appropriate and humor when needed. The book’s invocation of literary and filmic doppelgangers prevents it from becoming dour or dry, despite its sobering subject matter. Even the Klein-Wolf confusion, which appears farcical on the surface, leads the reader to some unexpected and occasionally uncomfortable places. That Klein is able to take on such wide-ranging material and more or less stick the landing speaks to her prodigious skill as a researcher and writer. For anyone eager to explore the absurdities of our post-Covid world, and willing to go for a few rides along the way, I would strongly advise giving Doppelganger a read.