MixedHyperallergicSmith dulls the immense force of the pandemic with her sharp-edged, searching prose ...Begun at the start of lockdown in the United States and finished days after George Floyd’s murder, Intimations , Smith’s third essay collection, breezes by at under 100 pages, perfect for our roving and scattered attentions. The six essays are crisp and vaguely personal, avoiding definitive conclusions for quieter moments of introspection and wonder. For Smith, cooped up at home with her family and confronted with the reality of filling time, writing provides a raft through stormy currents, her way of eking out a semblance of narrative during our moment of destabilizing upheavals ... This neatness afflicts all of the essays in one manner or another. I shouldn’t be surprised. Smith admits from the beginning that, for her, \'writing is control.\' You see the control in her staccato sentences and sleek lists. While bewitching at times, that structuring impulse feels out of tune with the chaotic realities of life under the pandemic.
