A spare, meditative reflection on writing, full of deep thought and reference to other thinkers and works. I liked it, but I wish it had been longer. It was written in a series of vignettes, and they were beautiful, but I wanted more.

I am a fan of Sofia Samatar's challenging and intricate fiction, including A Stranger in Olondria and The Winged Histories, and her travel memoir The White Mosque, so I was intrigued by the chance to read her thoughts on writing. Opacities is not a book on craft, though it definitely engages questions of how and why to be a writer, and I don't think we have a good word yet to describe the genre of its contents--mostly shorter parts (grouped into longer sections), they are less definite and more exploratory than many essays, almost like statements or interrogations in a longer conversation about writing and the challenges of being a minoritized writer. Many of them engage with quotations from other writers (building on them, challenging them) or are continuations from letters exchanged with another writer. They ask questions; when they answer them, they don't expect those answers to be definite. It's an active book that asks a lot of its reader, and I found it fascinating. It leaves the reader interrogating their own relationship to writing (as a producer, as a consumer).

Thanks to the author, the publisher, and Netgalley for my free earc in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are all my own.

The voice of these essays is both immediate and contemplative. I found this book to be full of interesting insights about writing.