Intimations: Six Essays

Intimations offers readers exactly what its title implies: six occasional essays that are not as much about the pandemic (which no one, at the moment, needs to read about as we are all living it), but about the lives we once lived, and how those lives have been altered in so many small ways that everything we do or say feels uncanny, strange, without a clear sense of how this will all end. The essays are without overstatement, exaggeration, or pretense, and are more free because they are more rough and ready than one would usually expect from a bestselling author. An earlier reviewer characterized the style as a potential indication of a mid-career slump. It is more likely a refreshing product of the strange mix of having all of one's responsibilities cancelled, and yet feeling like we have even less time in the day anyway. She writes about parenthood in all the ways we are told not to--it can be boring, it can be maddening, it can be superlatively joyful but we often only realize that joy long after the moment has passed. She writes about George Floyd with urgency and honesty.I finished the book in a few sittings (the second: while my 2-year-old clamored for lunch and my six-year-old was asking if today was going to be any different than yesterday) and noticed on the last page:"All the author's royalties will go to charity. This edition benefits: The Equal Justice Initiative | The Covid-19 Emergency Relief Fund for New York."

Zadie Smith’s Intimations has already been received to much critical acclaim. There is thus no need for another literary critique of these essays. Instead, I’d simply like to point out why there is such a demand for them at this time and why they’re likely to continue their commercial success.These vignettes from a plague year are not meant to be definitive or comprehensive in any way. They’re slices of life under a pandemic; acutely perceived and analyzed experiences. But more than any other characteristic, there is the mark of the real.Ironically, in an era where we’re bombarded by news about the pandemic we have very few accounts of what living under Covid-19 feels like. While we are shut up in our own homes, Smith is able to give voice to one sojourner’s experience. As readers we crave knowing what others are going through.She is also able to discuss the curious paradox of an epidemic rendering us inactive with all the energy being devoted to Black Lives Matter. In a concluding essay, she sees the epidemic as the best metaphor for the systemic racism that has infected America throughout its history.So while these essays may not be classics, they satisfy that hunger for shared suffering, a semblance of community for those who have had to endure everything from mere inconveniences to real tragedy. These essays are bound and deserve to be the literary and commercial success that they already show every sign of becoming.

I admit this took me longer to read than it should have, as I put it down for several weeks, only to resume and pause again. However, that is not at all a reflection of the wonderful content which truly reverberated in my soul at times. While there were only a few passages or sentences I highlighted and shared with friends, they were ones I thought to be very impactful and worthy of hearing. Zadie Smith also displays an artful skill to connect themes through her work, and to always bring you back to the point, to a little something more. It’s a pretty short read, all in all, and a satisfying recapture of 2020.

Growing up, as students, we read ‘classic’ literature — novels, short stories, essays — and try to look at them through the lens of that time period. That’s why reading Zadie Smith’s Intimations was extra surreal — it’s real-time commentary on not just a global pandemic, but on a nation and world suffering from multiple viruses, may of which aren’t new, but rather highlighted by current events. It’s a reminder that “difficult times” were never just relegated to days past– we’re all living it and always have and Zadie brilliantly examines what this all means, where we can go from here, if anywhere. This essay collection is a masterpiece and should be required reading. It will make you feel. Many people have wondered, such as on social media, what literature inspired by 2020 will look like, what art will come of these times. Zadie might be the first deliver (in book form), and it’s both timely and timeless.

This is a really short read, but it's probably my favorite thing I've read so far this year. It's a series of essays that cover life in 2020, with some very interesting, fantastically written perspectives on life in quarantine, George Floyd, the intersection of depression and anxiety, and writing itself. It manages to be extremely relatable, while still offering new, intriguing ways to further analyze the ways in which life has been turned upside down over the past year.

A few years ago, I started an effort to read everything Ms. Smith has published between book covers. For the most part, it has been an enjoyable experience, if I haven’t found her work to be as impressive as I’ve heard from others. Still, despite what I find to be her many strengths as a writer—her facility with comedy, her strongly drawn characters, her ability to turn her experiences into universal storytelling—she has her weaknesses too; in particular, I find her plots to be good, not great, and she is often very weak in endings.This collection of short essays written during lockdown seem to illustrate her worst instincts as a writer. Though she has some interesting points to make here, nothing here seems very well thought out, engaging, or memorable. Perhaps she thought she could get away with it as unshaped reflections of a slice of time, but it doesn’t really work for me. This will be one of her forgotten pieces, I think.

In buying this, I thought I really didn’t want to read essays about right now, it was too much like the news. I’m glad that I did. These works are of the now, but also manage to describe life in 2020 in ways I feel but haven’t been able to put into words.

Zadie is a wonderful writer and beautiful thinker. This was a salve during these challenging pandemic years.

The first Zadie Smith book I’ve read. It won’t be the last.

very smart text, as always she delivers

Its a b'full collection of stories that will warm you, nudge you, move you and ultimately shook you. Thank you Zadie. Loved it

What a wonderful collection of essays. These put into words the incoherence of 2020, with a mixture of compassion and anger. I think at this point, when the pandemic is still ongoing, the only way to grasp it is through such short impressionistic essays that engage with personal and collective history. The final essay is one of the most beautiful things I have ever read and brought me to tears.