Maggie Smith can WRITE! I literally gasped reading her famous poem “Good Bones” and found myself taking breaks throughout this beautiful memoir to sit in the beauty and rawness of her words. This is the story of her divorce with constant questions and reflections. I loved the technique of short chapters - some with just a couple of sentences. I felt like I was in her head. What a treasure this one is. Fantastic for a book club - so much to discuss. Thanks to One Signal Publishers / Atria for the advanced copy.

Heartbreakingly beautiful. First time reading work by this author and, I loved the style of poetic memoir prose. So much beauty, pain, love, sorrow, shifting, growing, and healing in the pages. Every metaphor to every detail, Maggie Smith paints the aftermath of the end of her marriage leading up to her adapting to feeling whole as herself. Even though I've never been married, I found myself relating to her. A memoir like no other.

Thank you to Atria Books and NetGalley for the ARC.

I knew a memoir written by poet Maggie Smith would be a gorgeous read, but I had no idea just how powerfully she'd deliver. With a poet's attention to words, phrasing, timing, details, Smith navigates the prickly path leading from finding damaging evidence threatening her marriage to the aftermath of her divorce. Told in exquisite lyrical vignettes, asking unanswerable questions, structured using the narrative arc - exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution - the craft of this memoir alone had me hooked. What she does with cento left me breathless. I love this book, and many thanks to NetGalley and Atria/One Signal for allowing me an early read of this unforgettable book. I'm still reeling.

This read as the journal of a poet going through divorce. It felt as if she woke up in the middle of the night and jotted down all the things that were troubling her, then gathered those notes into this memoir. She has a beautiful voice, but needed editing. While I did relate to her struggles as a newly single mom, as a woman expected to be smaller to make others happy, there was too much repetition. The best bits were the parts about her children, which she limited to protect their privacy. (I respect that, while appreciating the beauty of her love for them.)

Thank you to Netgalley and Atria for the ARC!

What can I say about YOU COULD MAKE THIS PLACE BEAUTIFUL? Full of beautiful tragedies and terrible joys, Maggie Smith's exploration of loss, grief, and her own poetry is a glimpse into the life and mind of a deep thinker and deep feeler. Smith's approach to narrating her own past is admirable: clear-eyed and honest but also full of self-compassion and gratitude. Her contextualization of some of her most notable poems provides insight into the life experiences and perspectives that shaped them; her account of "coming of age in your middle age" shows how poetry is not just an art but an orientation towards life and living. I will return to this one again and again.

In You Could Make this Place Beautiful, Maggie Smith draws on the lines of her most famous poem to help her navigate the pain and trauma of a betrayal and divorce. This book is written in a series of vignettes with repeated stanza chapters and observations on writing style and form and how art mirrors life. Maggie Smith's prose is gorgeous, raw and razor sharp. What starts as a memoir of a very personal experience ripples out to explore the power dynamic in marriages, the frequent disparity of work load between partners, the difficulty of being taken seriously in an artistic profession, what makes a family, and how we heal. There are no easy answers to be found in this memoir, but there is a tremendous amount of hope within the questions

Poet Maggie Smith’s memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, is an emotional and powerful look at marriage, divorce, and parenting. She tries to make sense of her life using what she knows best: writing craft. She looks at her life story as a plot, even while urging readers not to do the same. She examines the story structure of her life. She even envisions it as a stage play.

All these devices help the reader see more deeply into the author’s struggle to reconcile her expectations versus her reality, to make sense of the major changes that come with the ending of a marriage and the beginning of something new.

While this book is not a straightforward narrative, it leads readers from one point to the next in an artful way. Rather than a story, it is a series of essays pieced together like fragmented thoughts. And just like the author, the reader is left with questions. That is the point, after all – we never get all the answers to life’s biggest questions. I especially appreciated the author’s conclusion that she could move on despite uncertainty.

I was intrigued by her efforts to write her own truth while protecting those she wrote about. She never names her ex-husband. She discusses her children, but explicitly tells readers when she won’t be showing certain parts of their lives. I have never read a memoir that dealt with hard issues while maintaining this level of privacy before. But it works and it feels even more personal as the author tells us what she’s not going to tell us.

Even as this is a book about the author’s own divorce, the effort she makes to see her own responsibility is obvious. It doesn’t feel like she’s blaming or vindictive. I felt that her description of what it is to be a wife is very apt. She was a woman who loved someone and worked and sacrificed to try to make it work. Then, she was left a single parent, working to provide for herself and her children, while learning to embrace her own power.

I loved it. I already plan to read it again.

No one, and I mean NO ONE, writes memoir better than a poet. Maggie Smith's memoir about the dissolution of her marriage, finding her footing as a single parent and the long journey back to her sense of self is tender and evocative. I appreciate that she laid so much of herself bare on these pages while also putting up a clear boundary -- this is a "tell-mine", not a tell-all, and some parts of the story just aren't hers to share or ours to know.

Wow. I have been a fan of Maggie Smith's poetry for a long time, feeling connected with her words. While I am not experiencing a divorce as she did, I can relate so much to her experiences in the way she writes them.

A must-read. It is amazing.

Maggie Smith’s memoir was a 5 ⭐️ read. You Could Make This Place Beautiful was so beautifully written. I found myself stopping every few pages to take a screenshot or contemplate her words.

Interestingly enough, this memoir felt so personal even though I could not be more different than Maggie Smith. An author, divorced, a mother. Still, I found so much peace and comfort in her stories. She contemplates motherhood, work, gender roles, marriage and divorce, and being a woman.

Her stories, written in short chapters with a mix of poems, questions, and essays, were raw, honest, moving. I will be forever changed by the way she explores her life and at the same time, challenging me to do the same.

Thank you for sharing your story, Maggie and thank you to NetGalley and Atria Books for an ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review!

Maggie Smith’s “You Could Make This Place Beautiful “ is a gorgeous vignette-style memoir about the depths of motherhood, divorce, and personal identity.

Prior to reading this, I was not familiar with Smith’s previous work, so went into this with fresh eyes. I’ll definitely be going back to read her earlier poetry.

There were many instances while reading this where I felt Smith’s choice of word/phrasing was absolute perfection.

A few times in the memoir, I felt that there was a bit too much repetition—of exact words/phrases/metaphors, and not in a full-circle kind of way, but perhaps because these chapters were once stand-alone pieces written at different time? For example, the author used the words “impossibly” and “neat” a few too many times throughout. A couple descriptions of events were also repeated in different chapters. I felt like there were times when the repetition made sense (chapter themes), but tunes when they didn’t (mentioning in 2 different parts of the book how her Happy Place is named “Bittersweet”, and how ironic that is.

That’s being really nit-picky though…. I loved this memoir and am very appreciative to Netgalley and Atria/One Signal for allowing me to read an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

Wow... This was a complete surprise. I went into this memoir blind, not having read anything about it and I was really pleasantly surprised. Told mostly in prose, with some poetry occasionally thrown in, this tells the story of Smith's divorce and the massive changes in her life as a result.

This is a quiet story, yet it really packs a punch. You feel her pain and confusion and hurt, but there is real beauty as well, primarily through her relationships to her children. It jumps all around and is a little repetitive, but clearly this is intentional. This event was unexpected, and Smith helps the reader feel every raw emotion as she felt it. This is definitely a book worth reading slowly and revisiting.

The poetic nature of this memoir combined with my own similar lived experience of divorce made this an easy 5 star read that I couldn’t put down.

I highlighted so many lines. Things that are stated so beautifully and honestly that I wish I could have written myself.

This is about a woman’s own sense of self, which should appeal to all women whether you are married, divorced or single.

The structure and titles are also entertaining and keep the pages turning easily.

I absolutely love You Could Make This Place Beautiful and couldn't put it down, reading it in one day. The book covers the dissolution of the author's seemingly happy marriage, and her thoughts and feelings as she struggles to come to terms with the huge shift in her life as a result.

Smith's openness in sharing her disbelief, pain, aching confusion, hurt, and grief even as she tries to piece together how to move forward is both admirable and highly relatable. Her skill with words is absolutely amazing! This is my first exposure to her writing, and I aim to seek out her other works immediately.

One of the best books I've read in 2023! Don't miss this one.

My thanks to Atria/One Signal for permitting me to read an advance digital review copy via NetGalley. It is scheduled for release on 4/11/23. All opinions expressed in this review are my own and are freely given.

I spent this weekend immersed in Maggie Smith’s new memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful. I had put off reading it because, well, I’ve been divorced twice (the second one almost destroying my faith in a benevolent god) and I didn’t know if I wanted to go there with Maggie. BUT WOW, I’m so glad I did, because Maggie’s new book reminded me that even though we are sometimes broken, what can come of that is an unveiling of the stronger self we always were but didn’t know. And the way she has woven together repeating motifs is masterful and moving and honestly, beautiful. You don’t just leave this book feeling better for her, you leave feeling like you, too, have learned how to be more your beautiful self. Thank you, Maggie. (And hey, call your local independent bookstore and preorder a copy – the book comes out mid-April).

I haven’t read much of Maggie Smith’s back catalog, but after reading this I’m bumping her up on my TBR

A gorgeously written real, and raw, story of a woman piecing her life back together after divorce. Reading her relive her miscarriages and how she saw her children dealing with the divorce, man that was heartbreaking. I liked how it was sort of a stream of consciousness and you felt like you were sitting down with her and listening to her work through her thoughts.

Thanks to NetGalley & Atria Books for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I can’t remember when I first came to Maggie Smith’s poetry - in all honesty, it was probably around the time Good Bones went viral. But since then, I’ve read all of her collections. When I saw that she was publishing a sort-of-memoir, I couldn’t wait to read it - not because of the specific subject matter; I’ve never been married and the subject of divorce wasn’t one specifically that interested me - but because I wanted to see how a poet (especially one whose work I love) approached the format.

I absolutely loved this book. It’s clear from how this book is written that Smith is a poet - the chapters are short and wandering. The writing is introspective and gorgeous and it has a quality I’m not smart enough to define but which I associate with poetry.

I'm a fan of Maggie Smith's poetry, so I knew You Could Make This Place Beautiful would be gorgeously written, and it is. This memoir tells the story of Smith's divorce and how she rebuilt a life for herself and her two children after her marriage ended. The story unfolds in a non-linear way, with vignettes imagining Smith and her husband as characters in a play. My favorite parts of the book were the longer sections because I liked the chance to settle down in a scene for a while instead of moving along to the next one. Smith tells her readers at the start of the book that her memoir isn't a tell-all, but I wish she had delved deeper in certain passages or stayed with a moment for a few more pages. Despite that minor quibble, I enjoyed this book, and I'd recommend it to anyone who appreciates a well-written memoir about life's second chances.

I loved it.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful is the last line of one of my favourite poems of all time (Good Bones - https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/89897/good-bones), so I was really excited to read this memoir - and I’m so glad I did.

On the face of it, this book is about Maggie processing her divorce, and life leading up to it and after. But it’s impossible to read this without reflecting on your own life and relationships with your family and most importantly with yourself. This book feels so intimate to read - and it is - while at the same time, clear boundaries are established about what will and will not be shared. The unsaid sometimes says just as much.

The writing is immensely thoughtful and self aware, and heart wrenching at times. There are many recurring motifs in this book, but each repetition seems to uncover a different layer or perspective. There is a magic in this. There are a couple of different metaphors and analogies she keeps coming back to throughout the novel, and reading it feels like you're there, processing it all with her in real time. Form and content - they work together beautifully.

I put off writing this review for so long because I didn’t think I was doing it justice. I probably still am not. You should read it for yourself.

A big thank you to NetGalley, Atria/OneSignal Publishers, and of course, Maggie Smith, for sharing a copy of this ARC with me.