I loved You Could Make This Place Beautiful so much and have no idea how to do it justice in a review. It is the poet Maggie Smith’s memoir that the goodreads synopsis says “explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels.”

It was so beautifully written that I had to read it with my eyes and ears at the same time. Listening to Smith narrating her own book as I also was able to highlight the sections speaking loudest to me. I really don’t know how to talk about this book so I’ll leave you with a quote from a footnote:

“I wanted this book to have more levity. More than that, I wanted the life to have more levity. Reader, I wish I could offer you 20 percent more wit and 20 percent less pain, and I wish life had offered me those bonuses and discounts, too. But to play devil’s advocate: it’s okay to have feelings. You don’t have to laugh them off. You don’t have to turn everything painful that happens into a self-deprecating joke in which you and your suffering are the punchline. It’s okay to put away the sad trombone. It’s okay to show up as your whole self, to come as you are.”

Thank you so much to the publisher, Netgalley and Librofm for the free ebook and audiobook to read and review.

I highlighted this book on my Booktube channel. You can access the video here: https://youtu.be/X-Z2vFxKxcA

Thank you NetGalley and Atria books for the e-ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I was immediately drawn to the cover of this book before reading the description. I just knew it was going to be something I would love to read! And, WOW, was I right! Maggie Smith's memoir was impactful and beautifully written. I appreciated her vulnerability. I was captivated by the uniqueness of this memoir because it doesn't read like other memoirs I've read before. It's read more like someone is processing a major event and their past life and you're sitting there inside their brain listening to all the thoughts run through their head.
I enjoyed how Maggie Smith processed her whole divorce and how she healed.

Highly recommend!

Maggie Smith's personal essay-poetry mash-up "You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir” (Atria/One Signal, 2023) lures readers with a stunning minimalistic floral book design, while the bite of an earthshaking family breakup and its life-altering aftermath for Smith creeps into its cream-colored pages.

Smith, well-regarded and awarded for her poetry and her previous book “Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change” (Atria/One Signal, 2020), explores her relationship’s denouement and its formation through the lens of writing: plot, character, narrative. Short vignettes of several pages, or a handful of words marinated with tender poet’s care, revisit Smith in her vulnerable moments. She breaks “the fourth wall,” Stravinsky style, challenging readers for their supposed need for the naked truth of her relationship's demise, while also providing us with enough juicy bits to satiate.

Does Maggie Smith’s memoir attract from the cities and mountains far and wide because they hoped for something tawdry? I don’t think so. We flock to her poetic skills. Her ability to make the unspoken expressed and the terrifying less scary. As Smith writes, it’s like she is a nesting doll carrying the past inside. I imagine we might all like our nesting dolls to view that mountain together someday.

Thank you to Maggie Smith, Atria/One Signal, and NetGalley for the digital ARC.

Well, I'm a big Maggie Smith fan, so I was probably going to love this no matter what. That said, I was blown away. by the power of this book. It's probably not surprising that a poet would craft such heartbreakingly beautiful prose sentences. Short, repetitive chapters are the chorus between the stanzas of her fractured marriage. Does the foundation first crumble when she has the audacity to travel for work? At a reading halfway across the country, she's called to come home, because her son has a fever, and apparently she is the only one who can deal with this...despite being in Seattle. Of course, by the time she returns, the fever is gone. Is the divorce hostile? How about when the husband's lawyer refers to her writing---her award-winning, highly-anthologized writing---as "writing." Throughout Smith acknowledges this is no tell-all, this is merely her report of what happened....a report that is allowed to be less than complete as she protects the privacy of her children, and a report that might be told differently through another's lens. And despite all of the bullshit that this report details, we see Smith come out the other side, weathered but strong, not the first woman to buckle down and learn her voice in a time of great loss.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this ARC.

There are few perfect books, but this one is among them. It's beautiful, heartfelt, heartbreaking, and a tribute to the redemption that comes when we refuse to abandon ourselves.

I love the well written word, but my final judgment comes down to how a book made me feel. I didn’t have to choose between the two in the case of You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith. Maggie’s lyrical lines are poetry in prose form. Admittedly, I connected personally on many levels with Smith’s “tell-mine,” and appreciated both the unraveling and raveling, often at the same time. Who is a more unreliable narrator than someone telling their own story, both because it’s their own, and also because there is no omniscient narrator to wrap up loose ends. She’s not going to give you any answers, but you still might find some along the journey, or better yet, maybe even a little piece of yourself. I loved this one!

This memoir is an incredible recounting of ordinary events. Marriage, birth, divorce. ---all commonplace but given beautifully sharp insight and emotional resonance through Maggie Smith's poetic voice. and pointed words.

This was a beautifully written memoir, I loved every part of it. Although I haven't experienced divorce, I could relate with how the author felt navigating her thirties wondering about what was next for her. I really enjoyed the poetry weaved in and out and it was just such a hug to read. I have already recommended it to everyone I know. I think that this book would also be such an important book for men to read, to understand better what a partnership looks like.

A beautifully written memoir that hits on a lot of difficult topics. There are times when the author intentionally withholds information that makes it hard to fully invest, especially when she states that multiple times. Her structure and style are beautiful to read though

So touching and heartfelt. You can tell the author really poured her soul into this. It was memoir-poetry-hybrid that really worked. I am dying to know if the ex husband has read this, if so he should change his name and flee the country. LOL

The author writes about her recent life in short, linear vignettes, detailing her life, her marriage, and the subsequent deterioration of the life she knew. The short chapters and focused topics make this memoir meaningful and easy to read. The structure of the book seems very intentional, with very short chapters, a continuation of chapter themes, and perfectly placed poems.

Making a subtle transition from poetry to prose, the essays are nuanced and elegant, spare but with just enough substance to divulge her unique perspective. This book is what I wished The Crane Wife: A Memoir in Essays had been.

As the author mentions, she is still in the midst of her grief, lacking the insights that time and healing can bring to a situation. Her bitterness and resentfulness toward her ex-husband are evident in her depictions of the choices he makes and the leftover pieces she must pick up. I didn't fully grasp why she makes a point to mention that certain details are not meant to be shared on a public forum, particularly tough moments with her children, but she also emphasizes the fully transparent nature of this memoir.

Nevertheless, this is the best depiction of surviving a divorce I have ever come across. She captures the nuances of the untethering that must take place and not knowing what to do with the decade of experiences they shared.

Enjoyed this book . She writes about the truth in a beautiful way and doesn’t hide her from her part in the bad or good parts . The only thing was the format of chapters, they should have been longer and broken up in the smaller segments

Thanks to the publisher for an ARC!

I highlighted probably half of my Kindle copy. The meter, the rhythm, the cyclical nature of the sentences is oddly comforting for a memoir about such an earth-shattering event. Smith knows how to craft a sentence. The meta-stage-play aspect was not my cup of tea but I understand what she was going for.

Overall, an absolutely beautiful and atypical entry into the memoir genre that features enough wisdom and observations about human nature that could fill a book twice its size. Smith's prose is exact, but not exacting. A celebration of the human spirit's capacity to keep moving.

Thank you for this memoir. It was something I would not normally have chosen, having read the description. There were parts that made me incredibly sad, and even times she made me look at my own marriage. But in the end, it was a raw and honest look at how we all treat each other and ourselves.

Best memoir I have read in a very long time! It is honest and raw and such a perfect reflection of vulnerability and truth. I highlighted like crazy and recommended to friends. The style and the format were just right. The world needs more Maggie Smith's. I am so glad this book exists in the world, as the author was able to puts to emotions myself and others I know have struggled to express. This is truly a work of art!

"This isn't a tell-all," poet Maggie Smith (Goldenrod; Keep Moving) writes in the opening pages of her brilliant, beautiful memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful. It can't be, she argues, because she is not an omniscient narrator, she cannot know all, and because some of what she offers in the pages that follow is, in fact, an account of what she does not know. It's a "tell-mine" instead, a version of the pain and hardship brought on by the dissolution of her marriage--but also found in the marriage itself, in a life spent making herself small enough to fit inside of an institution and a partner that did not serve her, not really, or offer room for growth and expansion. "I've had to move into--and through--the darkness to find the beauty."

You Could Make This Place Beautiful could easily be described as brutal in its telling. It is a brutal, and brutally honest, reflection on some of the lowest and hardest moments of Smith's life. But in that darkness, Smith finds--and shares--the promised beauty: in the soft fuzziness of her young son's earlobe, in learning to rollerblade during lockdown, in the cake dropped off by a neighbor on her first Christmas morning waking up without her kids. In these tellings, her memoir remains somehow soft in its brutality, yearning toward what is most human in us all: a desire to see and be seen, to understand and be understood. "I'm trying on so many metaphors, pushing toward understanding. I'm trying on so many lines written by others but through which I can see my own experience."

With an artist's eye for detail and a poet's way with words, Smith holds up the pain of her divorce and subsequent trials of forging a new life as a single mother. Within the context of this transformative time in her life, she offers readers glimpses of small moments of love and grief and joy and community and tears tucked in the crevices between large philosophies, belief systems and inheritances. The result is a memoir that is as much poetry as prose, a kaleidoscopic account of one woman's quest and questioning that will resonate with any reader, divorced or not, who has faced hardship, solitude or loss (or, particularly, all three). You Could Make This Place Beautiful makes a gift out of Smith's pain, tied up not in a neat bow, but offered with grace, humility and wonder as something to be treasured and held up gently, to see what it may reflect of ourselves when it touches the light. --Kerry McHugh, freelance writer, for Shelf Awareness PRO

Shelf Talker: A brilliant and beautiful memoir from poet Maggie Smith reflects on the pain of divorce, and the unexpected beauty found in (re)building a life after the dissolution of a dream.

Maggie Smith is an inspirational poet who that brings life into words. If you are new to her work,

It's not necessary to read anything of hers before embarking on this journey…

This book is about realization, love, loss and healing. It is predominantly revolving around the circumstances and moreso the feelings of her divorce. She so eloquently describes her emotions as she tackles them wave by wave. She keeps persevering one chapter at a time, one step at a time, and that is the inherent beauty of this book.

I am beautifully wrecked… I just am… My divorce was almost 20 years ago (omg, it's crazy it has been that long) and this brought up so much… And that isn't a bad thing. This book healed me in a way I didn't know I needed. And I will forever be thankful.

As she says, this isn't just a book for herself, this is a book for us. She wants to help others. And Ms. Smith, you have definitely achieved that in my opinion. The beauty in stripping your soul for us to see will definitely help others to keep moving. Thank you. ♥️

🌸You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith:
This was unlike anything I have ever read before, at least in structure. Part memoir, part poetry - Smith uses short vignettes that explore the disintegration of her marriage, the challenges of single parenthood, and a woman’s ability to find a renewed sense of self. Together these vignettes come together to tell the story of Smith ability to make her life beautiful again. I was unsure of this one at first because of the structure but soon found that the words flowed off the page and I couldn’t put it down. Finished in two days - with utter respect and admiration for Smith as a writer and person.

It's difficult to sum up You Could Make This Place Beautiful, because, as Smith notes, there is no definite beginning, nor an ending, and so by extension, it is difficult to come to an adequate summation. Smith's writing is exquisite-- it's intelligent, emotional, delicate, inquisitive, respectful-- and the form of this memoir is its strong point. I was genuinely surprised at how much I enjoyed Smith's book, as I'm not a mother and oftentimes, I'll get lured into a book for its beautiful writing but halfway through, the jig is up and I'm bored. Not so with this. While the story is one that has been told many times, it's in the telling of it that Smith excels. It has been a while since I've read a work of non-fiction-- I go through phases-- and this may just inspire me to delve back into a new memoir phase.