Zadie and this collection are some of the best company I could’ve asked for in this baffling summer of 2020.

“I used to think that there would one day be a vaccine: that if enough black people named the virus, explained it, demonstrated how it operates, videoed its effects, protested it peacefully, revealed how widespread it really is, how the symptoms arise, how so many Americans keep giving it to each other, irresponsibly and shamefully, generation after generation, causing intolerable and unending damage both to individual bodies and to the body politic—I thought if that knowledge became as widespread as could possibly be managed or imagined that we might finally reach some kind of herd immunity. I don’t think that anymore.”

"Contempt as a Virus" was definitely the stand out of this collection, but as always, Zadie Smith's comments on race, time, and privilege never fail to spark some much needed introspection. ( )

Very small book, with a few short essays, most (all?) related to COVID. I think I like her fiction more than essays but there was some good stuff. A very good writer. ( )

An impulse purchase from the new book. section at my local bookstore. I liked the idea of this book. Clearly this could not be some thorough analysis of the pandemic from a place of great perspective. Rather this is overhearing someone else processing a thing while we are all still in that thing. (And in August, we are all still very much in the middle of this thing, though some aspects are very different already from the days Smith is writing from.) The benefit being not only getting to listen to that processing from someone you haven't already been processing with for five months, but someone who has a career of thinking about people and how they work, how they shape narratives out of the chaos of their lives.

Many useful moments. I wished for more. (Not a criticism.) ( )

Zadie Smith is the perfect person to write about the insanity of 2020. I just wish this book were longer. ( )