Maggie Smith is a beautiful writer. Her poetry in particular is so precise and exacting, it can take my breath away.
It’s hard to review this book because of how personal it is. She tackled the memoir in an interesting way, and some of the vignettes were stunning. Towards the end it got fairly repetitive and not every vignette felt necessary for the overall narrative.
The best parts provided commentary on invisible labor and the inequitable division of household tasks. I would love to have heard her develop these ideas in a more universal way. I do realize that a memoir isn’t the best form for that though

I am going to be honest in saying I thought this was the OTHER Maggie Smith when I picked up this book, and I was disappointed at first. However it took me about 3 sentences to fall in love with *this* Maggie Smith. Her writing is so decorative, piercing and beautiful. Maggie tells the story in this memoir of her divorce and the piecing back together she had to do after the divorce. I was really moved by the way she took this unfortunately all too common experience and got to the root of a lot of feelings people wrangle going through heartbreak like this but don’t have the language for.

And she has fantastic taste in music.

I was thrilled to have the opportunity to read @maggiesmithpoet’s forthcoming memoir early. Maggie writes beautifully of things that are painful — change and divorce and loss — and I highlighted many sentences and paragraphs. I would recommend this book (coming April 11th) for anyone who loves her poetry, beautiful writing, thinking about things in new ways, memoir and essay. As human beings, we are all faced with loss and change, and the need to cultivate resilience when our worlds are rearranged, and it is comforting and bolstering to be a witness to someone else’s journey. Thank you, Maggie.

Thanks also to the publisher Atria/One Signal, and Netgalley for the advanced review copy.

I began reading this as soon as it was sent and was not able to put it down until I finished. Maggie Smith takes an unflinching look into her life and her past in this memoir about loss and the complexities of being a woman. By reflecting on and existing in the messy throughout the course of the memoir, the author was able to share such a genuine and raw view into her world. As she emphasized, this is her story: “a tell-me”. There is such power in owning your lived experience for what it is and as a reader, I felt that power, pain, anger, and despair. Yet, it also felt healing to read a journey of self-reflection and discovery.

Thank you to Maggie Smith, Atria Books, and NetGalley for this digital ARC.

Maggie Smith brings her poetic voice to her prose and for that we can all be grateful. Though our stories are not completely parallel, You Could Make This Place Beautiful made me feel seen and heard in a way I did not even know I was missing. The way she tells her story while honoring the privacy of others is a gift, and not an easy task when the story revolves around a dissolving marriage. Both gut-wrenching and a balm to the spirit. Smith carries themes through the book with a brilliance you would not think possible for non-fiction, but haven't we all lived moments that we feel like couldn't have been scripted better if we tried?

I had high expectations for this memoir based solely on my familiarity with the author's viral poem Good Bones, and I'm happy to report I devoured it in two days. Smith writes in achingly beautiful, relatable prose as she takes the reader on a journey through the rise and fall of her marriage, the rewards and demands of parenthood, and rediscovering herself in middle age. I especially enjoyed how she breaks the fourth wall to discuss the challenges of imposing a traditional narrative arc on a life actually lived. Just as Good Bones speaks to any parent trying to preserve their children's outlook on a world filled with harsh realities, You Could Make This Place Beautiful is bound to articulate thoughts and feelings we all have as partners, parents, creatives, and humans doing the best we can at life. Thank you to Atria/One Signal Publishers and NetGalley for the opportunity to read in exchange for an honest review.

I am always drawn to memoirs by poets. Smith's memoir is inventive in form, vivid in the textures and images of an ordinary but singular life plus the extraordinary and singular experience of the viral poem at the center of this narrative before the marriage unravels. There is also a particular power in the vantage point of where this memoir is written from-- in the middle of its messiness and hurt. A memoir with more distance would not feel the same. I always also want to read more fiction and nonfiction set in small cities and college towns, though apart from academia--I think there's such beauty and a particular sensibility in these places, and Columbus Ohio is as much a character and presence in this story as any of the people.

Thank you for an advanced copy of this book. Maggie's prose is so poignant. I hope she finds peace as she continues her journey past divorce.

Where do I start with this magnificent memoir by Maggie Smith? It is unlike any memoir I have ever read and yet, every memoir I might ever read in the future will be judged by the brilliance that Ms. Smith brought to hers. This memoir is a breath of fresh air... and, yes, absolutely a knock out and I all I could think was how much I'd love to be friends with Maggie.

So much of her story connected with me... my life was similar. A husband who left me for someone else. I did not find a post card, but the end result was just as uncertain - how do I go forward, who am I, and how do I heal?

And as I read along with Maggie's journey, I cheered her on every step of the way. As Maggie says numerous times, this book is not a tell all... but it is a journey to enlightenment that does not leave Maggie unchanged nor did it leave me unchanged.

Perhaps the only good memoirs are the ones written by poets, but I know this... You Could Make This Place Beautiful is the best book I read in 2022. I highly recommend it.

I would like to thank Netgalley, Atria Books, and Atria/One Signal Publishers for this digital ARC.

I recieved this as an ARC from NetGalley but these are 100% my own opions I formed while reading.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful was a beautiful book. I do not typically read memoirs but this was an extremely enjoyable read. Maggie Smith carefully created each chapter, word, sentence with such talent that drew me in and makes me want to read more from her. Smith is truly an excellent author that I would highly reccomend.

"It’s a mistake to think of one’s life as plot, to think of the events of one’s life as events in a story. It’s a mistake. And yet, there’s foreshadowing everywhere, foreshadowing I would’ve seen myself if I had been watching a play or reading a novel, not living a life."

I am not sure what made me request this book since I'd never heard of Maggie Smith and hadn't read her previous book or poems. But I am so glad I did. This book is exquisite. Completely heart shattering and also incredibly exquisite. It seems weird to say I loved it because this book is so sad.

It's about Maggie's divorce and how she feels during and after. It's so incredibly beautifully written that I can't do enough justice to it. I know some readers will say it doesn't have any details and doesn't really say anything and I will disagree with my whole heart.

It doesn't have the details of what happened and who cares. What happened is her own unique story and she's allowed to keep whatever she wants to herself. What she does give us is how it feels. And that's the most relatable part anyway. The breaking. The suffering. The questioning. The revisiting of all the moments. It's all so real.

"So when he asked me to stop traveling for work, to stay home, I agreed. I agreed to make my life smaller, my writing less important, because I thought that would make him happy. But he was still unkind, still distant. Why? I asked. Because he didn’t think I would stick to it. He thought I’d start traveling again eventually, that the writing wouldn’t stay small. That I wouldn’t be satisfied or content if I folded it up and set it aside. Here’s the thing: He was right. It wouldn’t have lasted. But who tries to save their marriage by making their partner choose between being who they are, doing what they do, and being married? I would have chosen being married, and I would have been miserable. And then it would have ended anyway."

She has such a way with words. This part about the ocean is exactly why I love going to the water when I am sad. The smallness that makes me part of the world. She is able to say exactly how I feel.

"I sat in a lounge chair set out by one of the hotels, and opened the magazine, the thin pages flapping in the wind. I’d done it. I’d crawled up out of the underworld into the sunshine. Something about being at the ocean reminds you of how small you are, but not in a way that makes you feel insignificant. It’s a smallness that makes you feel a part of the world, not separate from it. In that moment, I felt it: I was where I was meant to be, doing what I was supposed to be doing."

This book is full of sorrow and it's also full of hope and love and possibility. It is through reading books like this that we feel less alone in the world. It's because others are willing to share their pain and put their sorrow on paper so beautifully that we get the privilege to feel connected to others.

"What now? I am out with lanterns, looking for myself. But here’s the thing about carrying light with you: No matter where you go, and no matter what you find—or don’t find—you change the darkness just by entering it. You clear a path through it."

Thank you, Maggie Smith.

with gratitude to netgalley and Atria Books for an advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

Maggie Smith is a treasure! Her poetry speaks to so many of us, and her memoir certainly does as well!

She begins with a simple Emily Dickinson quote that really says it all: "I am out with lanterns, looking for myself."

And this book is indeed Maggie seeking (and finding) herself throughout the pages. But it's also a journey for the reader; an invitation to find one's self within the words. Thoreau once asked us to do much the same thing. Which makes sense that Maggie is as much Transcendental writer as anything else.

Please do me the favor of reading this book.

Raw and spare at times, but still beautiful and lyrical. As someone who has gone through a painful divorce, I found much of myself in these pages. I think this book with resonate for many, many women.

Even readers who don't know Maggie Smith's poetry will likely know she's a poet after reading this evocative, metaphor-filled memoir. Smith crafts each sentence, paragraph, and short chapter carefully and deliberately as she takes readers through a dissection of her feelings about her acrimonious divorce, the marriage that preceded it, and her fears for her children.

People -- particularly women -- will see themselves or people they know in this story. Smith has a gift for holding up a mostly true, maybe slightly rosy mirror up to reality. It's what made her poem, Good Bones, go viral, and that same talent is on display here.

Thanks to NetGalley for the advance copy.

I'm not sure I can do justice to Maggie Smith's You Could Make This Place Beautiful in a review, but will simply say that she has written a beautiful book. If you read her poem "Good Bones", the last line is "You could make this place beautiful", and she writes about her attempts to make a beautiful place in the aftermath of a divorce. This book is a series of short vignettes and pieces, and you can tell that the writer is a poet. She writes about the loss of someone who knew her, her loss of connection, her losses through miscarriage, and her children's unfathomable, unconscionable, and impossible losses. We read about the people she encounters along the way, her therapist, her intuitive therapist, and the kind woman from the title company when she refinances the house after managing to keep it as a home for herself and her children.

"Keep Moving kept us in this house. Or rather, the advance for the book I wrote about enduring my divorce kept me from losing our home in the divorce."

But this isn't just a sad story about the end of a marriage. Maggie Smith says that she has not written a "tell-all" but instead maybe a "tell-most". It's well worth reading and absorbing.

"I wonder: How will my children feel if they think that being seen as a mother wasn't enough for me? What will they think of me, knowing I wanted a full life -- a life with them and a life in words, too?
I'm dog-earing a realization in my mind now: I don't think fathers are asking themselves these questions. Fathers don't feel guilty for wanting an identity apart from their children, because the expectation is that they have lives outside of the home. I'm starring and underlining this fact for future reference."

Thank you to Atria, NetGalley, and Edelweiss for providing me with a copy of this book. It will be published on April 11, 2023.

I have no words to describe how heartbreaking, wonderful and real this book was. I will be buying a copy when it comes out and recommending it to everyone I know because it’s so powerful and relatable and personal and raw. I have no other words besides that. This book was simply fantastic.

Thank you NetGalley for the chance to read this ARC. Full disclosure - I know the author, as our youngest children attended preschool together and we live in the same community.

This memoir moved me so much. Smith does not "tell all" as she says but she tells and shows and intimates and describes and evokes a lot. I could feel her frustration and her anger, and completely understand her love and concern for her children. I am in awe of her strength and honesty. This was a quick read of essays, poetry and quotes. I'd love to see it in it's finished form as I am betting the digital ARC doesn't do the design justice.

If I didn't know the author I am not sure this book would have affected me in the same way. But to me it is a triumph.

A series of gorgeous essays written with poetic lyricism reveal a marriage coming apart and the telling of a woman’s life as she regains her sense of self, sprinkles the love of her children on every page, lets the value of her life’s work flourish, and each sentence forward vibrates with the power of healing. This is Maggie Smith’s memoir YOU COULD MAKE THIS PLACE BEAUTIFUL.

What a beautiful place it is indeed as we look at the light through Smith’s eyes as she lifts readers up with her extraordinary assembly of words.

There are several authors whose books, once I’ve read one, I want to read them all. I now count Maggie Smith among that small group. I look forward to reading her poetry.

Thank you to NetGalley and Atria/One Signal Publishers for this ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I liked both the form and content of the first half of the book. Lots to learn from the distance of a different set of problems. The poems were
truly the highlight. The second half of the book was a bit less cohesive and slower. I tired of hearing about Rhett. Anyone with a credit card can make a place look beautiful
the lived experience seems not to matter in the instagram age..usually some life shift wakes you up from the play acting. I like that this book starts there.. I read this along with a similar themed book by Hannah Pittard and they make
perfect tangential reads..I feel like it’s anger not resolution that has the best chance of changing the entrenched marriage dynamic….

Like Smith's poetry, this memoir is powerful yet gentle, filled with both strength and vulnerability. Maggie Smith writes with such purpose and thoughtfulness and I found myself stopping to re-read lines over and over again, simply because of how beautiful and impactful they were. She explores the complicated topics of divorce, motherhood, and success with such ease and fluency - I almost felt like I was floating in a river and was drifting further downstream as I progressed through this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the e-ARC.