01/16/2023
Poet Smith (Goldenrod) eschews the traditional memoir format in this mixed take on her recent divorce and its aftermath. “I’ve wondered if I can even call this book a memoir,” she writes. “It’s not something that happened in the past that I’m recalling for you.... I’m still living through this story as I write it.” In winkingly titled chapters (“Email, Subject Line: Update;” “A Half Hour to Cry”), Smith details the collapse of her marriage with a bard’s eye for detail: a postcard with another woman’s name in her husband’s messenger bag, “open, its unbuckled flap hanging over the back of the chair”; the discovery of half the family’s savings withdrawn after an argument; and coparenting, through separation and a pandemic, before her husband moved 500 miles away. Smith often breaks the fourth wall to explain her writing process, which reads as a mix of self-effacing, self-knowing, and, occasionally, self-satisfied, especially when accompanied by aphoristic asides. (“A memoir is about ‘the art of memory,’ and part of the art is in the curation,” she writes in an imagined response to an imagined reader’s query. “Next question.”) This lyrical personal reflection is undoubtedly affecting, but as often it feels affected. Agent: Joy Tutela, David Black Literary. (Apr.)
Maggie Smith’s book is one of the most powerful memoirs I’ve ever read....This book makes me see the women in my life in a new light, not that they are different, but I am.”
—Kwame Alexander, Oprah Daily
“Rich in nuance and unrelenting in its honesty, Smith’s memoir is a bittersweet study in both grief and joy.”
—TIME
"This book is extraordinary."
—Ann Patchett
"A beautiful book...stunning."
—Oprah Daily
"A triumph"
—Mary Louise Kelly, NPR
"Smith turns to prose to chronicle the end of her marriage and the hard, beautiful work of loving and valuing herself."
—People
"Throughout, she quotes the Emily Dickinson line 'I am out with lanterns, looking for myself,' and the book shines with a light all its own."
—New York Post, Best Books of 2023
"Sparkling & brilliant. Maggie was able to put into words things I’ve always felt as a writer and a human."
—Daisy Perez, CBS Mornings
"[An] elliptical, inquisitive book"
—Buzzfeed
"By engaging anguish directly, Smith carves a space for the beautiful over the heart that holds initials alongside 'forever.'"
—The Rumpus
"This book is a gift."
—Leslie Jamison, bestselling author of The Empathy Exams
"Beautifully written... Smith should be just as celebrated for her prose."
—Town and Country
"Incredibly relatable...At turns devastating and darkly funny."
—Columbus Monthly
“You Could Make This Place Beautiful is about recognizing your own worth in your relationship, and in the world.”
—Slate
"A poet’s memoir... [Smith] has an uncanny ability to boil down giant ideas into tiny, dense sentences that are both playful and heartbreaking."
—Shondaland
"An anatomy of....an artist stepping into her own light, of a mother working out how to create a loving family on her own."
—BOMB
"Smith’s prose is as warm and welcoming as her poetry."
—Chicago Review of Books
"Smith opens her heart like a book, dog-earing moments both painful and joyous...Smith's conjuring of beauty through pain and her special blend of vulnerability and encouragement go down like a healing tonic.”
—Booklist (starred review)
"You Could Make This Place Beautiful is a sparklingly brilliant memoir-in-vignettes that only Maggie Smith could write. Yet this is a book for everyone—who among us has never had our world upended by the loss of a relationship? Maggie Smith’s powerful mastery of language, and amazing ability to portray life in all its rich messiness, is on full display in this bold, brutally candid, and yes, beautiful, book.”
—Isaac Fitzgerald, New York Times bestselling author of Dirtbag, Massachusetts
“In this lightning bolt of a debut memoir, Maggie Smith gives us the truth of healing in form as much as story: getting through is no pretty, linear narrative. It’s one chapter forward and five chapters back. You Could Make This Place Beautiful gave me back a part of myself I thought was gone for good: the knowledge that beauty isn’t something out there to find. It’s in us.”
—Megan Stielstra, author of The Wrong Way to Save Your Life
“Listen, you may not need me to tell you what you already know about the shining star that is Maggie Smith, but you can certainly add me to the chorus of those singing her praises about You Could Make This Place Beautiful. Among her singular gifts as a writer are the way she swiftly brings her poetry to her prose; her willingness to show up to the page with aspirational levels of vulnerability, grace, and joy; and a clarity of heart amid the heartbreak that together makes this a moving and gorgeous must read.
—Elizabeth Crane, author of This Story Will Change
“When personal tragedy strikes us, first we have to survive, then we have to begin healing. This exquisite book will help you do both. Reading Smith's memoir, I laughed and gasped and ugly-cried and somehow began to process ten years of my own pent-up, frozen grief. This book is nothing less than a cathartic miracle.”
—Alissa Nutting, author of Made for Love
Listen, you may not need me to tell you what you already know about the shining star that is Maggie Smith, but you can certainly add me to the chorus of those singing her praises about You Could Make This Place Beautiful. Among her singular gifts as a writer are the way she swiftly brings her poetry to her prose; her willingness to show up to the page with aspirational levels of vulnerability, grace, and joy; and a clarity of heart amid the heartbreak that together makes this a moving and gorgeous must read.
In this lightning bolt of a debut memoir, Maggie Smith gives us the truth of healing in form as much as story: getting through is no pretty, linear narrative. It’s one chapter forward and five chapters back. You Could Make This Place Beautiful gave me back a part of myself I thought was gone for good: the knowledge that beauty isn’t something out there to find. It’s in us.
"You Could Make This Place Beautiful is a sparklingly brilliant memoir-in-vignettes that only Maggie Smith could write. Yet this is a book for everyone—who among us has never had our world upended by the loss of a relationship? Maggie Smith’s powerful mastery of language, and amazing ability to portray life in all its rich messiness, is on full display in this bold, brutally candid, and yes, beautiful, book.
When personal tragedy strikes us, first we have to survive, then we have to begin healing. This exquisite book will help you do both. Reading Smith's memoir, I laughed and gasped and ugly-cried and somehow began to process ten years of my own pent-up, frozen grief. This book is nothing less than a cathartic miracle.
★ 03/01/2023
In her memoir, award-winning poet Smith (Good Bones) uses poetic vignettes to dissect the ending of her marriage and her journey toward self-love. Smith starts with her husband's infidelity, something she tackled in her 2020 book, Keep Moving. She moves effortlessly between first and third person, short sections, repeating titles, and recurring themes to examine a life she never imagined for herself. The author never refers to her ex-husband (the addresser) or his lover (the addressee) by name, keeping them both on the outskirts of the new life she is creating. But her children, Violet and Rhett, play a central role as she leans on them, her family, and friends as she makes sense of motherhood, gender roles, and power dynamics that exist in every relationship. Through self-interrogation, Smith crafts her experiences into ones that connect to the larger struggles of women's lives and how people work to create something new out of places in their lives that have ghosts and hold secrets. VERDICT This innovative memoir will attract readers who are drawn to poetry hidden in well-written prose and memoirs and will appeal to those who seek meaning in reinventing their lives.—Rebekah J. Buchanan
2022-12-06
The noted poet digs further into life after divorce.
The title of this book is the last line of Smith’s 2015 poem “Good Bones,” which went viral. Unfortunately, “my marriage was never the same after that poem.” The author first charted her response to the pain of her husband's infidelity in a series of Twitter posts that became a well-received book called Keep Moving. Then came Keep Moving: The Journal, and now, this memoir tracking Smith’s attempt to heal herself. Formally, it has much in common with This Story Will Change, Elizabeth Crane's recent book on the same topic. Both Crane and Smith employ the popular technique of using many short sections with long, ironic, and/or repeating titles. Here, there are 12 chapters titled “A FRIEND SAYS EVERY BOOK BEGINS WITH AN UNANSWERABLE QUESTION,” suggesting a dozen different possible responses, and there are four chapters titled “THE MATERIAL,” which ask whether this book can be of any value to others. Smith combines these elements with other narrative gimmicks, such as addresses directly to the “Reader,” single quotes from other writers floating on a page, italicized sections, and a few of her own poems. Some readers will skim these sections, but without them, this would have been more of a magazine article than a full book. The highlight of the text is the author's children, Violet and Rhett. They say such great things, both funny and sad, blessedly not metafictional, often profound. “A few months after my husband moved out of the house,” Smith reports, “I was trying to calm and reassure Rhett, then six years old, at bedtime. He said, ‘I know, I know. I have a mom who loves me, and I have a dad who loves me. But I don’t have a family.’ ” It’s arguably the most memorable passage in the book.
As a wise woman once entreated herself, keep moving.
