This is the first book I have read by this author, and I am already looking for more!

While I haven't experienced divorce, like the author has, I have had many years of being the parent who looked after the children, while my husband was the primary breadwinner. I remember feeling baffled at times that he always took it for granted that he could do whatever he wanted when he wasn't at work, because our sons were my responsibility. So I thoroughly understood where she was coming from in that regards.

It also made me sad to think that she felt responsible for the difficult situations like miscarriage and postpartum depression, and her husband pulling away because of things like that. While new relationships are exciting, he missed so much growth by not being there for the long haul. It seems like he was truly too selfish to be a good husband.

I'm happy to see that Maggie is in a happier place now, and I feel it's wonderful to have the opportunity to read about such an inspiring female.

Thank you NetGalley and Atria books for this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review. This memoir is emotional and beautiful. Many highs and lows, and quite an emotional ride. Although I am not going through the same things, you can connect to the author throughout her story. Just beautiful and raw, do yourself a favor and purchase a copy. I suggest reading it slowly in parts, as you just need time to reflect. Just beautiful. 5 Stars.

This was an absolutely beautiful memoir. I loved Maggie Smith’s poem, Good Bones, when it went viral during the pandemic, so I was really looking forward to this, and it did not disappoint. While the subject matter is tough – it covers the painful separation and divorce from her husband and the fallout affecting both her as well as her children – the writing is lyrical, gorgeous and thought-provoking. While she withholds many of the details, it still felt very intimate, like having a conversation with a good friend. The focus here is on the emotions and feelings, not the facts. Even though it’s not her primary genre of writing, her talent is really on display here. Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing an early digital copy in exchange for an honest review.

So beautifully written! I enjoyed the writing style and how the book was formatted/broken up. It was raw, emotional and truthful!

First I have to say that I read this because I thought it was a memoir for British actress Maggie Smith (aka Professor McGonagall) so please don't judge me! I was about 15% in when I realized that it definitely wasn't what I expected but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it anyway!

I really, really enjoyed the pace of this memoir. The short chapters made it a quick and easy read. And it's not quite written as "traditional" poetry but definitely felt poetic in the delivery. I felt like Maggie was talking directly to me about her life while also revealing her innermost thoughts and experiences. Reading this felt like a cautionary but loving tale of a woman who is learning how to be. How to be... everything she needs to herself. How to learn her own value. How to accept change and the constant flow of life. Maggie Smith explores a journey of love and self-discovery and it's absolutely beautiful!

Maggie Smith tells her story of learning of her husband’s affair and how that affected her life afterwards. She does a fantastic job of telling her side of the story while setting boundaries, especially where her children are involved. It’s challenging to take this hurt and pain and channel it creatively, and I imagine it took her a lot of courage.

It felt like a privilege to get these glimpses into Maggie’s life as it changed, in some ways for the worse but also for, the better. I may not have experienced many of the things Maggie has gone through, such as being a mother or going through a divorce, but I think that’s part of what I love about memoirs. It allows you to glimpse a life entirely separate from your own, and you can learn and appreciate their lives.
I was impressed with Maggie’s drive and ability to raise her children and balance a demanding job during a strenuous divorce. She also highlighted the importance of balancing your own personal successes in a relationship.

Lastly, I enjoyed the pieces of poetry thrown in throughout the prose. Poetry is essential to the author, and I found this kept the material flowing quickly. The short chapters also made this book a quick read. The flow of the storytelling also felt quite poetic and original.

This is a remarkable memoir to pick up!

I want to thank Netgalley and Atria Books for an e-ARC of this memoir in exchange for an honest review.

Stunning read. I had to be in a particular headspace to appreciate it, but once I dove in, it simply seared me. I will be remembering passages from this book for a long time. Both devastating and hopeful at once.

Maggie Smith forever. This book is a beautiful, honest, and cyclical look at loss, parenting, and the questions that we ask ourselves in times of great change. The structure of this memoir allows for either whole study or the use of brief passages - I can definitely see myself integrating this into a creative writing course or use as a mentor text in a memoir writing unit.

The title of poet Maggie Smith's memoir is a line from her poem, "Good Bones," which went viral, and attests to the power of finding the hope in sad situations. Here, she excavates the aftermath of her divorce, and what led up to it, leaving her a single mother of two children. Though this is a tale oft told, Smith makes it new with her shimmering language and insights like this: "We are all nesting dolls, carrying the earlier iterations of ourselves inside...I didn't lose these versions of myself...I carry them. It's a kind of reincarnation without death: all these different lives we get to live in this one body, as ourselves." This is not an airing of dirty laundry; here, Smith takes us on a poetic tour of the inside of her brain as she wrestles with the big questions: how can you love someone one day, and the next day want them gone from your life? What does it feel like to wish your marriage never happened while still loving your kids fiercely? How does one cope with grief and loss? Does one move on, or metabolize it? These are unanswerable questions, and she cops to all the ugly feelings while trying to find the lessons and the gold, taking us on a beautiful journey and I for one ended up wiser for it. I loved this book and would highly recommend it.

I will eagerly read/listen to ANYTHING Maggie Smith writes and her latest 'memoir' is utterly relatable as she navigates both a divorce and parenting during the pandemic. Great on audio narrated by the author herself. I just wanted to curl up by her feet and soak in the wisdom. Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an early digital copy in exchange for my honest review!!

CW: miscarriage, infidelity

I have long enjoyed the poetry and prose of Maggie Smith. So I was eager to have the chance to read her upcoming memoir. You Could Make This Place Beautiful follows part of the path into and through her separation and divorce and thus, is not light. For me, though, it provides some of the background for her beloved poems. She shared vignettes from the pandemic and parenting her two kids in the midst of these tender times personally and in our world. I appreciated the lack of resolution and willingness to sit with loose ends and being in “the middle”. All in all, this book was truly beautiful even while sitting in the pain. I am so thankful for the chance to read this before publication. Stunning.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing this advanced reader copy.

The prose? Stunning.
The topics? Heavy.
The story? Repetitive.

I’m not the target audience for this book but I’m sure it will resonate with those going through similar challenges as the author.

Thank you NetGalley for a copy of this book. I loved this book so very much. I loved that it was a memoir, but not a tall-all. It was her story, her way. It was so beautifully done. It was emotional and touching and had a touch of uniqueness that I haven't seen before. This would be a great gift for someone going through a divorce.

Thank you so much to the publisher, to NetGalley and to Maggie Smith for this beautiful memoir.

I loved this so much, and I could not write this review and do the writing justice. Maggie’s story reminded me so much of many of my friends who have gone through divorce. I loved the rawness of this, and I feel like she still protected her kids in a way that I appreciated.

I recommend reading an excerpt or two from this if you’re interested in the memoir, but I think anyone will love!

Brilliant writing as always,

I was introduced to Maggie Smith's work through her viral sensation poem, "Good Bones," which perfectly encapsulates the simultaneous hopefulness and despair of parenting in dismal times. When I saw that she had written a memoir about ending her marriage and rekindling her relationship with herself, I was so excited to read it. It did not disappoint-- You Could Make This Place Beautiful, told in vignettes and snippets of beautiful insight, is a stunner.

I love reading prose by poets, who are practiced in the skill of distilling big, beautiful ideas into small but mighty packages. In the same way that "Good Bones" so compellingly captures beauty and pain in nearly the same moment, so too does Smith's beautiful memoir. I loved all of it-- her reflections on her marriage and on making herself smaller to fit inside it, on her evolving relationship with herself, on how we choose to value (or not value) caretaking and art-making, and on her relationship with her children. Her love for her children shines through like a brilliant diamond. This is one of those books that I can see myself turning back to at various points in my life and finding something new that would resonate with me.

Maggie Smith's You Could Make This Place Beautiful comes out on April 11. Lovers of beautifully written memoirs should snatch it up. I've preordered multiple copies to give as gifts!

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an electronic review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to Net Galley and Atria/One Signal Publisher for providing an ARC of this book. It will be published on April 11, 2023. This a memoir of sorts where the author recounts the day she found a postcard written by her husband to another woman and the events that take place after than time. Although the story is sad and heartbreaking, filled with anger, grief, and loss, the author is able to reflect back with raw honesty and insight. The telling also has an interesting unique form which made me fell like I had an intimate view although the author makes it clear she is not revealing everything, only what is necessary to tell her story. It is a beautifully emotional telling and reflects the beauty the author finds in herself, her children, her life.

In You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Maggie Smith writes her memoir with a sense of resilience and strength amid heartbreak. She shares her story as a writer, wife, and mother and how she loses a sense of self as she struggles with demands on her time. The author shows how her marriage ends in divorce and how she struggles to make a commitment to herself and to her writing while sharing custody of Rhett and Violet. Maggie Smith unveils her life with reflective and poetic snapshots of moments in time. By the end of the book the individual pieces of her life come together to create a beautiful story. Maggie Smith’s memoir will resonate with women who balance both a career and family while trying to nurture their marriage. I highly recommend this book to anyone who struggles to be true to themselves amid the demands of life. Thank you to Net Galley for providing an advance copy of this book.

3.5 stars, rounded up because I know this will land well with many others.

This was (unsurprisingly) a beautifully written memoir with an equally (unsurprisingly) beautiful title. If I didn't already know Maggie Smith was a poet, I would've figured it out by Chapter Two.

That said, I really struggled with the repetition throughout. Repetitive devices work wonderfully in poems or short stories, but I grew exhausted by the midway point. It felt unnecessarily long and drawn out.

I do wonder if this is because the main story didn't resonate with me, though. I've never been divorced and it's been a long time since I've been through a bad breakup. (Not a humble brag... I've been through some truly awful breakups!!) I'm in a place where I don't love wallowing in my own pain, so seeing others do it really frustrates me.

Thank you to NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for sharing an early copy of this with me!

A thoughtful, honest memoir that reads like poetry, as poignant for what it leaves out as for what it reveals, constantly unfolding and circling back on itself, its notes echoing long after it’s finished.

I received an eARC of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

Gorgeous! I don't know how poet Maggie Smith managed to make "You Could Make This Place Beautiful," her memoir of her painful, bitter divorce and its aftermath, beautiful as well, but she did--the prose is lyrical (a pinecone "like a small wooden grenade"; sycamores with "mottled, paint-by-number bark") and the structure imaginative and unusual. Each section begins with the premise that "A Friend Says Every Book Begins with an Unanswerable Question," and what follows in that section is material related to Smith's various unanswerable questions, from the bleak "How to carry this" at the start of the book to the more optimistic "How to make this place beautiful" near the end. In between, Smith includes quotes from other authors and poets; ruminations on why she is writing this book, in a recurring section called "Some People Will Ask"; and--in what is probably the bulk of the book--anecdotes from the "plot" of her life. Plot, in fact, is just one of the aspects of the craft of writing that Smith presses into service to tell her story. There are Notes on Foreshadowing, on Character, on Inciting Incidents and on the Author's Intention, all of which use the act of writing this book itself to help tell her story--Smith even uses the metaphor of seeing her life as a play, complete with stage directions, program notes and offstage scenes, throughout the book (a particularly effective device as her ex-husband was, at one point, a playwright). There are so many gorgeous and poetic ways of thinking about things, such as when Smith writes that "I was ashamed to think of how I'd leashed my joy and tugged hard every time it tried to run," or when she notes: "The thing about birds: If we knew nothing of jays or wrens or sparrows, we'd believe the trees were singing, as if each tree has its own song. The thing about this life: If we knew nothing of what was missing, what has been removed, it would look full and beautiful." Emily Dickinson's quote, "I'm out with lanterns, looking for myself," is the book's epigraph and its pervasive image. In writing this book, Smith is out with her own lanterns, groping through the dark of her divorce and the emptinesses in her life that it left behind, and finding something else, which turns out to have its own fulfillment and beauty. I loved being with her on the search. (And I would be remiss if I didn't mention the cover, one of the most beautiful I've seen.)

Thank you to Netgalley and One Signal Publishers for providing me with an ARC of this book in return for my honest review. Highly recommend.