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You Could Make This Place Beautiful
Goodreads Choice Award
Nominee for Best Memoir & Autobiography (2023)In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes. With the spirit of self-inquiry and empathy she’s known for, Smith interweaves snapshots of a life with meditations on secrets, anger, forgiveness, and narrative itself. The power of these pieces is cumulative: page after page, they build into a larger interrogation of family, work, and patriarchy.
You Could Make This Place Beautiful, like the work of Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk, and Gina Frangello, is an unflinching look at what it means to live and write our own lives. It is a story about a mother’s fierce and constant love for her children, and a woman’s love and regard for herself. Above all, this memoir is an argument for possibility. With a poet’s attention to language and an innovative approach to the genre, Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful.
You Could Make This Place Beautiful, like the work of Deborah Levy, Rachel Cusk, and Gina Frangello, is an unflinching look at what it means to live and write our own lives. It is a story about a mother’s fierce and constant love for her children, and a woman’s love and regard for herself. Above all, this memoir is an argument for possibility. With a poet’s attention to language and an innovative approach to the genre, Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published April 11, 2023
About the author
Maggie Smith
16 books1,645 followersMaggie Smith is the author of the national bestseller Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change (One Signal/Simon & Schuster 2020); Good Bones (Tupelo Press, 2017); The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison (Tupelo Press 2015), winner of the Dorset Prize, selected by Kimiko Hahn; and Lamp of the Body (Red Hen Press 2005), winner of the Benjamin Saltman Poetry Award; and three prizewinning chapbooks.
Smith's poems and essays have appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Poetry, Image, The Best American Poetry, The Paris Review, AGNI, Guernica, Brevity, the Washington Post, The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, and many other journals and anthologies. In 2016 her poem “Good Bones” went viral internationally and has been translated into nearly a dozen languages. In April 2017 the poem was featured on the CBS primetime drama Madam Secretary.
A 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Maggie Smith works as freelance writer and editor. She is an Editor at Large at the Kenyon Review and is also on the faculty of Spalding University's low-residency MFA program.
Smith's poems and essays have appeared in the New York Times, The New Yorker, Poetry, Image, The Best American Poetry, The Paris Review, AGNI, Guernica, Brevity, the Washington Post, The Gettysburg Review, Ploughshares, and many other journals and anthologies. In 2016 her poem “Good Bones” went viral internationally and has been translated into nearly a dozen languages. In April 2017 the poem was featured on the CBS primetime drama Madam Secretary.
A 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, Maggie Smith works as freelance writer and editor. She is an Editor at Large at the Kenyon Review and is also on the faculty of Spalding University's low-residency MFA program.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 3,755 reviews
January 2, 2023
I have mixed feelings about this book. Maggie Smith knows how to write exquisite sentences so in that regard this book is compelling. It’s a memoir of a divorce but the book relies way too heavily on the conceit of “I’m not going to tell you everything.” Like, girl, fine. That’s your business. But to belabor that point. Whew. It was too much for me. It felt forced. At times it felt taunting. Like just say what you want to say instead of belaboring what you aren’t going to say. Memoir is a tricky genre. It isn’t autobiography. The focus here, on divorce and it’s aftermath is exactly what memoir should encompass. And I am fine with boundaries. But there are huge gaps here in the story and what is shared feels repetitive in a way that doesn’t serve the narrative. The structure is very interesting. Vignettes and quotations and musings on form and narrative that are metaphors for the marriage. The vignettes are, of course, the strongest parts. How Smith writes about her children and committing to herself are just lovely. Without the meta stuff it is one hell of a memoir.
May 7, 2023
Reader, this book is horrible, but I am not going to tell you why.
April 15, 2023
Hands down the most pathetic book of the year.
313 pages about the author going on and on over her ex husband and their divorce.
The ex husband has completely moved on, found a new girlfriend, moved in together with her, had fun on dating app’s, got engaged, moved to another state, whilst the author is still whining about him. When I finished the book I felt mentally exhausted.
Every chapter was like a deja vu, endless repetitions, the author had to remind us in every other chapter that she had a miscarriage, in every other chapter she is crying.
Also I didn’t get these parts of the book: “Reader, I’m not going to tell you everything”. “Reader, I’m keeping this and that to myself…” Like it’s fine we didn’t ask for it. But why repeat that non stop?
I have a question for all the Goodreaders. This book has a shocking rating of 4,51 at the time of writing this review:
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, rating: 4,28
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, rating: 4,08
Hamlet by William Shakespeare, rating: 4,02
The Odyssey by Homer, rating: 3,80
And so on and so on…
So basically, a book where an author is describing her miscarriage and putting the “material” of her miscarriage in a tupperware, has a higher rating then Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Homer?
313 pages about the author going on and on over her ex husband and their divorce.
The ex husband has completely moved on, found a new girlfriend, moved in together with her, had fun on dating app’s, got engaged, moved to another state, whilst the author is still whining about him. When I finished the book I felt mentally exhausted.
Every chapter was like a deja vu, endless repetitions, the author had to remind us in every other chapter that she had a miscarriage, in every other chapter she is crying.
Also I didn’t get these parts of the book: “Reader, I’m not going to tell you everything”. “Reader, I’m keeping this and that to myself…” Like it’s fine we didn’t ask for it. But why repeat that non stop?
I have a question for all the Goodreaders. This book has a shocking rating of 4,51 at the time of writing this review:
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, rating: 4,28
Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, rating: 4,08
Hamlet by William Shakespeare, rating: 4,02
The Odyssey by Homer, rating: 3,80
And so on and so on…
So basically, a book where an author is describing her miscarriage and putting the “material” of her miscarriage in a tupperware, has a higher rating then Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Leo Tolstoy, Homer?
Read
September 16, 2023Maggie Smith's series of vignettes about the end of her marriage triggered me in ways that make it nearly impossible to write an objective critique. So this will be a mashup of thoughts on her memoir and my emotional reactions to it.
I find Maggie a delightful presence on social media (we follow each other on Twitter) but I've read very little of her poetry — for no other reason than I just haven't yet — but what little I've read, I've loved. I was not at all aware of the poem Good Bones that went viral a few years ago, even though she asserts that if I'm reading her memoir, I must know what happened (an assertion I found awkward and off-putting). And the virality (I made that word up) of the poem is significant: it's a turning point in her marriage, a downturn, really, as well as a turning point in her literary career - a huge uplift. I know something of that, which I'll get to in a moment.
Maggie has in fact turned her social media savvy into an art form, compiling her 280 character tweets into a sweet and loving book of artistic encouragement that I read earlier this year: Keep Moving. But her memoir is a far darker response to the events in her life: the revelation of her husband's affair and the subsequent ending of her marriage.
You Could Make This Place Beautiful is a stripped-down narrative. Some chapters are only a sentence or two, a quote from another writer, a question the author poses to her readers and to herself, making this memoir more a series of journal entries or extended postcards from the edge of her life at this particular period of time. It's skimmable and satisfying in its brevity. But given the five-minutes-ago publication of Keep Moving and now this book about such a recent episode in her life, it feels like the poet is working too hard to establish Brand Maggie, to have her literary pandemic moment before writing about one's pandemic experience becomes completely passé. This is less a memoir, because the memories are essentially too fresh for deep thinking into them, than a series of reflections to be pondered as time passes and their true significance is realized.
So said from a women whose own divorce is now nearly seven years old and who is still sifting through her marriage and all the reasons for its demise.
I was married far longer than Maggie Smith- twenty-five years to her fourteen, but we were the same age when our marriages collapsed (mid-40s). Unlike Maggie, who had the brutal shock of her husband's affair, mine sputtered to a stop. I considered how much easier it would have been to have had some defining crisis to provide a messy but convenient exit. Instead it came down to how hard we were willing to work to keep moving forward with what we had built together. As it turned out, not very hard at all. Like Maggie, my own creative star was rising toward the end of my marriage, which came six months after the publication of my first novel. This certainly wasn't the reason, but there is connective tissue that relates to me becoming something other than who I'd been, at least in my ex's eyes, that added to the unhealable wounds.
I'm going to be very raw and real here. As a childless woman who has experienced multiple miscarriages and failed attempts at adoption, I harbor a brutal resentment toward other women who express grief and anger over their miscarriages when they already have, or go on to have, children. It is an exquisite and execrable pain, irrational and unfair, but it is primal. I can own it, hold it with tenderness, and accept that it is my own. What I'm left with is a wrung-out exhaustion and very little room for empathy for those who have gone through the horror show I have, yet at the end of the day, still have a kid or two or more to press against their belly in a fierce embrace, kissing the top of a head, squeezing bony kid shoulders, before releasing them into the world.
What I'm thinking here is that I need to write a memoir of my own, instead of faulting Maggie Smith for writing about her own experiences in a way that triggered a painful response in me. And to express gratitude for the graceful and poignant ways she shares her humanity with us. I just hope she holds something in reserve for her poetry.
I find Maggie a delightful presence on social media (we follow each other on Twitter) but I've read very little of her poetry — for no other reason than I just haven't yet — but what little I've read, I've loved. I was not at all aware of the poem Good Bones that went viral a few years ago, even though she asserts that if I'm reading her memoir, I must know what happened (an assertion I found awkward and off-putting). And the virality (I made that word up) of the poem is significant: it's a turning point in her marriage, a downturn, really, as well as a turning point in her literary career - a huge uplift. I know something of that, which I'll get to in a moment.
Maggie has in fact turned her social media savvy into an art form, compiling her 280 character tweets into a sweet and loving book of artistic encouragement that I read earlier this year: Keep Moving. But her memoir is a far darker response to the events in her life: the revelation of her husband's affair and the subsequent ending of her marriage.
You Could Make This Place Beautiful is a stripped-down narrative. Some chapters are only a sentence or two, a quote from another writer, a question the author poses to her readers and to herself, making this memoir more a series of journal entries or extended postcards from the edge of her life at this particular period of time. It's skimmable and satisfying in its brevity. But given the five-minutes-ago publication of Keep Moving and now this book about such a recent episode in her life, it feels like the poet is working too hard to establish Brand Maggie, to have her literary pandemic moment before writing about one's pandemic experience becomes completely passé. This is less a memoir, because the memories are essentially too fresh for deep thinking into them, than a series of reflections to be pondered as time passes and their true significance is realized.
So said from a women whose own divorce is now nearly seven years old and who is still sifting through her marriage and all the reasons for its demise.
I was married far longer than Maggie Smith- twenty-five years to her fourteen, but we were the same age when our marriages collapsed (mid-40s). Unlike Maggie, who had the brutal shock of her husband's affair, mine sputtered to a stop. I considered how much easier it would have been to have had some defining crisis to provide a messy but convenient exit. Instead it came down to how hard we were willing to work to keep moving forward with what we had built together. As it turned out, not very hard at all. Like Maggie, my own creative star was rising toward the end of my marriage, which came six months after the publication of my first novel. This certainly wasn't the reason, but there is connective tissue that relates to me becoming something other than who I'd been, at least in my ex's eyes, that added to the unhealable wounds.
I'm going to be very raw and real here. As a childless woman who has experienced multiple miscarriages and failed attempts at adoption, I harbor a brutal resentment toward other women who express grief and anger over their miscarriages when they already have, or go on to have, children. It is an exquisite and execrable pain, irrational and unfair, but it is primal. I can own it, hold it with tenderness, and accept that it is my own. What I'm left with is a wrung-out exhaustion and very little room for empathy for those who have gone through the horror show I have, yet at the end of the day, still have a kid or two or more to press against their belly in a fierce embrace, kissing the top of a head, squeezing bony kid shoulders, before releasing them into the world.
What I'm thinking here is that I need to write a memoir of my own, instead of faulting Maggie Smith for writing about her own experiences in a way that triggered a painful response in me. And to express gratitude for the graceful and poignant ways she shares her humanity with us. I just hope she holds something in reserve for her poetry.
May 11, 2023
Hmmm. This was not really what I was expecting—in a way that I bet the author would love, but that I don’t.
I read an excerpt of this book a few months ago that immediately had me requesting it from Libby. I was fascinated by the author’s dynamic with her husband, a dynamic that I’m sure many women have experienced. He belittled her creative work, expected her to take care of most things at home, and resented her success when it meant he had to pick up the slack. I was curious to read more about this relationship, hopefully to get a deeper understanding of it, and try to take some lessons from it for my own life and relationships.
I never felt like I got that understanding. That’s by design—the author constantly emphasizes that there is no one truth, that it wasn’t all good or bad, that her perspective on the divorce is constantly changing. But it’s frustrating. In any memoir, you’re only getting one side of the story. But I really felt like I was missing pieces here, to the point where I’m struggling with how to feel. Maggie’s husband certainly sounds awful—I mean, he cheated on her and chose to leave their kids behind. She hammers home again and again the coldness and cruelty that he showed her. He let them go to couples therapy for months without revealing to the counselor that he’d cheated.
But then Maggie reveals something: a conversation with her mother, who reminds her that on Maggie’s 40th birthday, her husband gave her a handwritten list of 40 things he loved about her. Maggie can’t even remember this, and when she looks for the list, it’s nowhere to be found. I guess my question is…how do you forget something like that? Maggie’s mom says she thought they were the perfect couple, that they’d never get divorced. That shook me because there is truly NOTHING good said about this man besides this one conversation about the birthday list and seeming like the perfect couple. I want to know how and why they fell in love, what she saw in him, and how he changed. That’s not in here. Instead, it’s a ton of repetition, metaphor, and ten million quotes from Maggie’s friends and children. I know she’s a poet, but the constant cycling around and around is tiresome. I wanted some real reckoning with the story of the relationship itself.
I realize I’m looking for something in this book that is purposefully not there. The excerpt kind of misrepresented it, and Maggie says again and again that the book is not a tell-all. But I don’t really want a tell-all…I just want her to get into the relationship, instead of her own reaction to its ending.
I also think maybe Maggie is a better poet than prose stylist. A lot of the sort of mic-drop moments in the book came off as heavy handed or smug to me, but I enjoyed the reprinted poems. Is this what Glennon Doyle’s books are like? This is what I imagine them to be, and that’s why I’ve never read a Glennon Doyle book, lol. Maggie mentions how funny she is multiple times, and then writes a passage about how she wishes the book was funnier, but that you don’t have to turn everything serious and sad in your life into a joke. Girl…maybe you’re just not that funny.
I’m going to have to read other people’s reviews because I’m having trouble articulating what bothered me so much about this. I think part of it is that I really wanted lessons about relationships, but this book really isn’t about the relationship. It’s about dealing with the aftermath of a divorce, which is a totally different thing. So I’ll chalk this up to a mismatch of expectations. Oh well.
I read an excerpt of this book a few months ago that immediately had me requesting it from Libby. I was fascinated by the author’s dynamic with her husband, a dynamic that I’m sure many women have experienced. He belittled her creative work, expected her to take care of most things at home, and resented her success when it meant he had to pick up the slack. I was curious to read more about this relationship, hopefully to get a deeper understanding of it, and try to take some lessons from it for my own life and relationships.
I never felt like I got that understanding. That’s by design—the author constantly emphasizes that there is no one truth, that it wasn’t all good or bad, that her perspective on the divorce is constantly changing. But it’s frustrating. In any memoir, you’re only getting one side of the story. But I really felt like I was missing pieces here, to the point where I’m struggling with how to feel. Maggie’s husband certainly sounds awful—I mean, he cheated on her and chose to leave their kids behind. She hammers home again and again the coldness and cruelty that he showed her. He let them go to couples therapy for months without revealing to the counselor that he’d cheated.
But then Maggie reveals something: a conversation with her mother, who reminds her that on Maggie’s 40th birthday, her husband gave her a handwritten list of 40 things he loved about her. Maggie can’t even remember this, and when she looks for the list, it’s nowhere to be found. I guess my question is…how do you forget something like that? Maggie’s mom says she thought they were the perfect couple, that they’d never get divorced. That shook me because there is truly NOTHING good said about this man besides this one conversation about the birthday list and seeming like the perfect couple. I want to know how and why they fell in love, what she saw in him, and how he changed. That’s not in here. Instead, it’s a ton of repetition, metaphor, and ten million quotes from Maggie’s friends and children. I know she’s a poet, but the constant cycling around and around is tiresome. I wanted some real reckoning with the story of the relationship itself.
I realize I’m looking for something in this book that is purposefully not there. The excerpt kind of misrepresented it, and Maggie says again and again that the book is not a tell-all. But I don’t really want a tell-all…I just want her to get into the relationship, instead of her own reaction to its ending.
I also think maybe Maggie is a better poet than prose stylist. A lot of the sort of mic-drop moments in the book came off as heavy handed or smug to me, but I enjoyed the reprinted poems. Is this what Glennon Doyle’s books are like? This is what I imagine them to be, and that’s why I’ve never read a Glennon Doyle book, lol. Maggie mentions how funny she is multiple times, and then writes a passage about how she wishes the book was funnier, but that you don’t have to turn everything serious and sad in your life into a joke. Girl…maybe you’re just not that funny.
I’m going to have to read other people’s reviews because I’m having trouble articulating what bothered me so much about this. I think part of it is that I really wanted lessons about relationships, but this book really isn’t about the relationship. It’s about dealing with the aftermath of a divorce, which is a totally different thing. So I’ll chalk this up to a mismatch of expectations. Oh well.
April 29, 2023
Thank you, @atriabooks and @librofm, for the gifted book and ALC.
During the pandemic, I was fortunate to have been made aware of Maggie Smith’s poetry, in the form of Keep Moving and the Keep Moving journal. I think the title says it all perfectly. Since then, I want to scoop up all her books, and I could not wait to read/listen to You Could Make This Place Beautiful, a memoir about Smith’s past marriage. She narrates audiobook.
Maggie Smith hooked me from the start when she said that the book would not be the story of a bad man and a perfect woman (I’m paraphrasing). It absolutely wasn’t. She was open and vulnerable while still protecting the privacy of her ex husband, and especially, her children. Another thing she said that grabbed me was that this is obviously her deeply personal story, and she wasn’t sure if it would help anyone. I found many universal truths, and you may have seen my story shares of some of the passages. The title comes from a poem Smith wrote about motherhood that is filled with openings and universal truths many can relate to.
Highly recommend the book and audio. Highly recommend anything by Maggie Smith. This will be a re-read many times over.
Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com and instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader
During the pandemic, I was fortunate to have been made aware of Maggie Smith’s poetry, in the form of Keep Moving and the Keep Moving journal. I think the title says it all perfectly. Since then, I want to scoop up all her books, and I could not wait to read/listen to You Could Make This Place Beautiful, a memoir about Smith’s past marriage. She narrates audiobook.
Maggie Smith hooked me from the start when she said that the book would not be the story of a bad man and a perfect woman (I’m paraphrasing). It absolutely wasn’t. She was open and vulnerable while still protecting the privacy of her ex husband, and especially, her children. Another thing she said that grabbed me was that this is obviously her deeply personal story, and she wasn’t sure if it would help anyone. I found many universal truths, and you may have seen my story shares of some of the passages. The title comes from a poem Smith wrote about motherhood that is filled with openings and universal truths many can relate to.
Highly recommend the book and audio. Highly recommend anything by Maggie Smith. This will be a re-read many times over.
Many of my reviews can also be found on my blog: www.jennifertarheelreader.com and instagram: www.instagram.com/tarheelreader
May 14, 2023
An absolutely gorgeous memoir about the dissolution of the author's marriage: how it happened and what followed. I wanted to give this five stars, but it was unforgivably antagonistic toward the reader at times. 😬
Click here to hear more of my thoughts on this book over on my Booktube channel, abookolive.
Click here to hear more of my thoughts on this book over on my Booktube channel, abookolive.
May 3, 2023
Reading (and rating) this book has me genuinely stumped. I wish I could give it at 2.5 because I equally loved and hated it. I savored certain passages and also rushed through big chunks of it because I couldn't wait for it to be over. I'm not a big reader of the memoir genre to begin with, but I can certainly respect that it's a tough nut to crack. As Smith repeats time and time again, this is not a tell-all but a tell-mine. The problem for me, and also maybe what most attracts certain readers of this book, is that it feels like being handed a bunch of tangled threads and saying, "Here, make your own sweater." The meaning is ours to make as readers, because (I suspect) the author hasn't quite figured out what to make of the things that happened to her yet.
There's a lot of wisdom here and some undoubtedly beautiful prose, but it felt too raw, too premature to read about the events of Smith's life as they were happening to her. Take this passage for example: "Is it enough for me to tell you this or do you want me to show you? Reader, ask yourself: Why would you want to see someone else's children crying? My children aren't characters in a novel or a movie or a play, they're real, and their grief is real, so this moment isn't for you." It feels genuinely bizarre as a reader of someone's divorce memoir to be chastised for reading the story the writer decided of her own free will to share with the world.
All in all, I can see how her story would be helpful and comforting to someone walking in her shoes. As a fan of Smith's poetry, I found a lot of it to be gorgeously penned. It was also exhausting to read at times. A mixed bag, for sure.
There's a lot of wisdom here and some undoubtedly beautiful prose, but it felt too raw, too premature to read about the events of Smith's life as they were happening to her. Take this passage for example: "Is it enough for me to tell you this or do you want me to show you? Reader, ask yourself: Why would you want to see someone else's children crying? My children aren't characters in a novel or a movie or a play, they're real, and their grief is real, so this moment isn't for you." It feels genuinely bizarre as a reader of someone's divorce memoir to be chastised for reading the story the writer decided of her own free will to share with the world.
All in all, I can see how her story would be helpful and comforting to someone walking in her shoes. As a fan of Smith's poetry, I found a lot of it to be gorgeously penned. It was also exhausting to read at times. A mixed bag, for sure.
June 22, 2023
I really disliked this book. Like… loathed it.
I’m really sorry the author had to experience hurt in the way she *minimally* detailed, but vaguely referenced for 300 pages.
The duplicity within was absolutely exhausting (it contained multitudes). Choose a lane. You’re writing this book ABOUT your divorce and getting through it; you as the author CHOSE this subject, so don’t treat your readers as trauma-lusted interlopers. It was maddening how many times I wasn’t even *thinking* a thought and it felt like I was being accused of being a peeping tom - “this isn’t for you reader”. The one redeeming quality of this is the teeny tiny vignettes, I could easily skip a few and not miss anything… because literally nothing happened in this book.
I had a friend aptly observe that many marriages end in divorce, what fresh perspective does this memoir bring? Upon completion : absolutely nothing. 💀
I’m really sorry the author had to experience hurt in the way she *minimally* detailed, but vaguely referenced for 300 pages.
The duplicity within was absolutely exhausting (it contained multitudes). Choose a lane. You’re writing this book ABOUT your divorce and getting through it; you as the author CHOSE this subject, so don’t treat your readers as trauma-lusted interlopers. It was maddening how many times I wasn’t even *thinking* a thought and it felt like I was being accused of being a peeping tom - “this isn’t for you reader”. The one redeeming quality of this is the teeny tiny vignettes, I could easily skip a few and not miss anything… because literally nothing happened in this book.
I had a friend aptly observe that many marriages end in divorce, what fresh perspective does this memoir bring? Upon completion : absolutely nothing. 💀
January 10, 2024
“Life, like a poem, is a series of choices.”
The American poet Maggie Smith opens Pandora’s box to reveal her weaknesses and obsessions as she faces the disintegration of her marriage.
I confess I wasn’t too keen on the way she portrays the facts preceding the separation. Her husband’s affair seems to be the ignitor of the underlying problems the couple had been facing for years, and even though she tries to seem fair by repeating again and again that this book is just her version of the facts, the resulting effect sounded more like a vindictive self-justification to me.
What I most appreciated of the memoir was the style.
Poetry floods Smith’s words. Repetition abounds in the original structure of her narrative. Presented in short sections, some with recurrent questions thrown at the reader, others using quotes from other writers floating on the page, she treats her life story as a play, engaging in word-game to visualize her emotional state, as if seeing her situation from an outward self, making it universal.
I was also moved by the effects a divorce can have on children. They are the true victims of the tense situations originated between their primary carers and the ones who absorb all the anger, fear, and deception.
Smith’s children were the highlight of this work. They come up with such genuine bursts of unpolluted ideas, both funny and heartbreaking, often profound, that they quickly become the beating pulse of Smith’s account.
Here is an example: Smith’s youngest child tells her at some point that he knows he is fortunate, but he can’t help feeling sad because he has a mom who loves him, and a dad who loves him. But he doesn’t have a family.
That sentence split my heart in two.
There are many others.
The title of this book is the last line of Smith’s 2015 poem "Good Bones", where she tries to conceal her children from terrifying truths about life. It can be suddenly cut short. It can be dark. Incomprehensibly cruel. Illogical. But what I most like about Smith’s voice is that, even when she is full of anger and pain, she can still make this place beautiful, only with words.
And then, life is only half bad.
The American poet Maggie Smith opens Pandora’s box to reveal her weaknesses and obsessions as she faces the disintegration of her marriage.
I confess I wasn’t too keen on the way she portrays the facts preceding the separation. Her husband’s affair seems to be the ignitor of the underlying problems the couple had been facing for years, and even though she tries to seem fair by repeating again and again that this book is just her version of the facts, the resulting effect sounded more like a vindictive self-justification to me.
What I most appreciated of the memoir was the style.
Poetry floods Smith’s words. Repetition abounds in the original structure of her narrative. Presented in short sections, some with recurrent questions thrown at the reader, others using quotes from other writers floating on the page, she treats her life story as a play, engaging in word-game to visualize her emotional state, as if seeing her situation from an outward self, making it universal.
I was also moved by the effects a divorce can have on children. They are the true victims of the tense situations originated between their primary carers and the ones who absorb all the anger, fear, and deception.
Smith’s children were the highlight of this work. They come up with such genuine bursts of unpolluted ideas, both funny and heartbreaking, often profound, that they quickly become the beating pulse of Smith’s account.
Here is an example: Smith’s youngest child tells her at some point that he knows he is fortunate, but he can’t help feeling sad because he has a mom who loves him, and a dad who loves him. But he doesn’t have a family.
That sentence split my heart in two.
There are many others.
The title of this book is the last line of Smith’s 2015 poem "Good Bones", where she tries to conceal her children from terrifying truths about life. It can be suddenly cut short. It can be dark. Incomprehensibly cruel. Illogical. But what I most like about Smith’s voice is that, even when she is full of anger and pain, she can still make this place beautiful, only with words.
And then, life is only half bad.
February 20, 2023
I don't typically rate memoirs (because who am I to decide and rate the writings of your life) but this one!!! Hands down, amazing. I felt so seen and connected on a level of just being a woman, or someone in a marriage, or a business owner, or just trying to figure life out. Highly recommend and will probably be talking about it for years to come! Do yourself a favor and pick up your own copy. You will annotate it!!!.
June 9, 2023
I love Maggie Smith's poetry and wanted to like this more than I actually did. It was beautifully written, yes, but it was also repetitive and at times confusing. Not confusing as in I didn't know what was going on, but confusing as in, why did she choose to structure the book this way? Every few passages, we, the readers, were reminded that what we were reading was not a tell-all about her husband's affair and their subsequent bitter divorce and custody battle, but Smith's "tell-mine"— her ruminations, grief, anger, depression, and, ultimately, forgiveness towards her ex-husband and co-parent. She didn't indulge us in all the gory details, but we, the readers, were treated as if we wanted them, had asked for them, and then reprimanded repeatedly for it. She went as far as to ask her readers why we would want to see her children cry. It was bizarre, but then again, sorrow is bizarre. But yes, a beautifully written piece of work centering a story as old as time—the perfect couple, with the perfect marriage, turn out to be not so perfect after all.
May 3, 2023
Smith is a self indulgent whining passive aggressive willing victim. I’d LOVE to hear her ex’s side of the story.
They couldn’t afford to hire a housekeeper one day a week? She had to pack the kids lunches everyday? They couldn’t afford to buy a school lunch now and then?she didn’t tell the marriage counselor about the pinecone or postcard for weeks? Why is she bemoaning a marriage to someone she makes sound totally selfish? She was such a terrific wife? She writes how innocent she is and he is the bad one. There are TWO sides to EVERY story.
It’s terrible that she disparages the father of her children. This book should have been a magazine article, it’s a tedious read.
They couldn’t afford to hire a housekeeper one day a week? She had to pack the kids lunches everyday? They couldn’t afford to buy a school lunch now and then?she didn’t tell the marriage counselor about the pinecone or postcard for weeks? Why is she bemoaning a marriage to someone she makes sound totally selfish? She was such a terrific wife? She writes how innocent she is and he is the bad one. There are TWO sides to EVERY story.
It’s terrible that she disparages the father of her children. This book should have been a magazine article, it’s a tedious read.
August 31, 2023
I read memoirs because I want to glimpse how other imperfect humans deal with life's ups and downs. How do they will themselves to get up again and again, to keep moving forward, and where do they find the moments of joy that provide salve to our broken places? Maggie Smith is undoubtedly one of the best contemporary writers in the genre.
In You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Smith provides glimpses into the painful collapse of her marriage. As she says, her suffering was loud. She is insightful; maturing from righteous anger to a more truthful understanding of what makes and breaks a marriage.
The format keeps the story from drowning in despair and includes short chapters, epigraphs, and an occasional poem shared in a conversational manner. Maggie Smith provides an authentic and powerful voice to challenges that many of us will experience in our lifetimes. I expect You Could Make This Place Beautiful to be among my favorite reads of the year.
I received a drc from the publisher via NetGalley.
In You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Smith provides glimpses into the painful collapse of her marriage. As she says, her suffering was loud. She is insightful; maturing from righteous anger to a more truthful understanding of what makes and breaks a marriage.
The format keeps the story from drowning in despair and includes short chapters, epigraphs, and an occasional poem shared in a conversational manner. Maggie Smith provides an authentic and powerful voice to challenges that many of us will experience in our lifetimes. I expect You Could Make This Place Beautiful to be among my favorite reads of the year.
I received a drc from the publisher via NetGalley.
June 1, 2023
You Could Make This Place Beautiful is a memoir by Maggie Smith and it begins with the story of the implosion of her marriage. But this book is far from a story just of divorce — In Maggie’s words, it’s “A story of a woman coming home to herself.”
Maggie tells of the life she built with her ex-husband, as a spouse and as a mom. She speaks of the new life she worked to build as a single parent, in a house with years of memories, while trying to now make it her own.
In “The Archive I Have” Maggie shares funny things her kids have said over the years and I agree, they were funny! This part of the book had me legitimately lol-ing.
I hadn’t heard of Maggie but when this book was released earlier this year, I saw so many positive reviews and became intrigued. Maggie narrates the audiobook and this is the way to go, you can hear her emotions as she shares this story, both painful and resilient.
Maggie tells of the life she built with her ex-husband, as a spouse and as a mom. She speaks of the new life she worked to build as a single parent, in a house with years of memories, while trying to now make it her own.
In “The Archive I Have” Maggie shares funny things her kids have said over the years and I agree, they were funny! This part of the book had me legitimately lol-ing.
I hadn’t heard of Maggie but when this book was released earlier this year, I saw so many positive reviews and became intrigued. Maggie narrates the audiobook and this is the way to go, you can hear her emotions as she shares this story, both painful and resilient.
October 6, 2023
I really liked this book. It starts off super strong and fit 50% she held me. In the back half it felt like she was unwilling to dig deeper into the dynamics of their marriage and played it safe with herself as the good one and him as the bad guy. I wish she’d strayed from that kind of narrative. The writing style, language, form were all stellar. The content left me wanting in places.
June 23, 2023
Buds, I'd like to confide in you, I found this book immensely disappointing. Starting it, it didn't even occur to me I'd think it was bad. It's a poet, writing about the loss of love. Ultimately, I found it utterly lachrymose, self-indulgent, and weirdly devoid of insight, which is too bad because the prose itself was often beautiful. Spoilers in the following rant, I guess?
January 23, 2024
This is not the wisest choice of book to end the year on, as it deals with divorce and the author's heartache and unravelling and putting herself back together.
We are all different yet we're so similar in many ways, therefore many of the moving pieces of the relationship dynamic have been experienced by many before.
Can we agree to stop calling divorced mothers single mothers and dismiss them, look down on them - you know what I mean - when they are the ones who stayed and are raising the children with fewer material resources, fewer options to get decent jobs due to their caring responsibilities? Have you noticed how there are no women who have a second family?
What sort of a decent parent chooses to move away to another town, or state to start a new family, especially when he asks for joint custody? We should shame those fuckers, although I suspect they don't experience guilt or shame. I'm getting heated up and I'm not even divorced (yet anyway), but I'm just tired of seeing the same story repeat itself again and again ...
Back to the book - I enjoyed the writing style and Smith's narration. Now I need to find something fluffier to read.
We are all different yet we're so similar in many ways, therefore many of the moving pieces of the relationship dynamic have been experienced by many before.
Can we agree to stop calling divorced mothers single mothers and dismiss them, look down on them - you know what I mean - when they are the ones who stayed and are raising the children with fewer material resources, fewer options to get decent jobs due to their caring responsibilities? Have you noticed how there are no women who have a second family?
What sort of a decent parent chooses to move away to another town, or state to start a new family, especially when he asks for joint custody? We should shame those fuckers, although I suspect they don't experience guilt or shame. I'm getting heated up and I'm not even divorced (yet anyway), but I'm just tired of seeing the same story repeat itself again and again ...
Back to the book - I enjoyed the writing style and Smith's narration. Now I need to find something fluffier to read.
May 27, 2023
Okay, so, it’s a good memoir, her writing is always great. But, I did find it a bit tedious as memoirs can often be. Maybe it’s because I’ve read quite a few lately but I find the romanticized overly poetic food descriptions and/or the ramblings about music they like (and often think they have such obscure taste in music when it’s literally everyone’s taste in music) in memoirs so aversive, as well as the “here’s a story about my kid that I thought was so cute surely everyone else will think it’s cute too and definitely want to hear it”, which if you have kids I get it, but at the same time, I just don’t care. Or the the “we are a very silly family unlike other families because we do bits and dance in the kitchen!” When she listed an entire playlist at one point, I get the point she’s trying to make but it’s insufferable really. I honestly think a lot of these themes are/have become very trendy in memoirs and I find myself eye rolling more than enjoying. Please roll your eyes at this review, it’s also a little insufferable!
April 21, 2023
I couldn’t finish this one. The repetition began to feel tedious halfway through. Creative non-fiction at it’s best can tap into universal truths but this book felt very personal and particular to the author.
April 15, 2023
Masterful writing. Truly, wow. I can’t say a divorce memoir is typically a genre that would call to me in a bookstore, but I bought this on a whim while traveling and I am so glad I did. Maggie’s ability to zoom in and then right back out keeps the book flowing with a beautiful balance between her unique story and the story of all of us - that is, the story of being human. I did find the beginning and end to be far stronger than the middle, but even with that - this book is a full five stars. I will read it again, as a writer, simply to study sentences and the consistent dedication to brevity. She says so much with few words, it almost feels like a magic trick (or sleight of hand, as she would say).
June 5, 2023
OMGAWD!! I'll never get those hours back. This was recommended to me, and darned if I can figure out why. I am blown away that this author found a publisher. I am even more blown away that she felt her story deserves a public audience. At one point she writes that she wants her story to have meaning so it can help others. Well, what was the meaning??? How is this helpful to anyone? Maybe it was even worse because I did this as an audio book. Her voice is so dramatic and she often comes across as condescending and elitist.
June 4, 2023
The author abuses her talent for writing beautiful prose to force her readers to endure 309 pages of bitterness and self-pity. This book would get one star but for the beautiful way in which the author writes. She knows how to use languages almost better than anyone but she has not figured out how to consider her reader when she writes. The book jacket says, “Above all, this memoir is an argument for possibility.” Oh really?
Pages 1-126 of 309 - The author thrashes her reader with beautifully written expressions of pain and agony over a very ordinary end to a marriage she, like her husband, was very unhappy in.
Page 127 of 309 - “Sometimes I feel like I titled this book Kittens and Rainbows, and then I wrote hell.” Yes. Yes you did.
Page 158 of 309 - A glimmer of hope that the author is starting her healing journey.
Page 168 of 309 - Just kidding! Still sad and bitter and self-pitying.
Page 181 of 309 - Oh, and now we have to hear your pandemic experience? Great. Just great.
Page 185 of 309 - She starts dating someone and has fun. Oh, so we’re going to eat, pray, love this thing and find happiness only when another man comes into the picture?
Pages 187-249 of 309 - No, no. It’s not eat love pray. (But it’s almost as self-absorbed.) She’s still sad and miserable and angry. New man disappears from the story. Thankfully.
Page 250 of 309 - Some healing finally starts. Thank God!
Page 258 of 309 - Trying to prove she is magically blessed while her ex-husband is getting chewed up by karma. So, still bitter. No healing in sight and we are more than 80% through the book.
Page 269-288 of 309 - Ruminate. Ruminate. Ruminate.
Page 289 of 309 - The author considers than maybe she should be been more honest in titling her book but then again, heck no! She tells her reader she realizes now it’s a call to action for how she should live her life. She just won’t demonstrate putting this into action in any way whatsoever at any point in the rest of the book.
Pages 290-309 - Hey, she says, I’m putting my life back together and I love my life and I love myself. OMFG, lady, are you serious? You drag your reader through 290 pages of wallowing and suffering with almost no real self-reflection or demonstrable growth for a payoff of platitudes in last twenty pages. I mean, to be fair, you did say over and over again that this book was a “tell-mine” book but did you seriously never consider that you are asking readers to read a lot of pages of self pity and dragging your ex-husband to no end?
This book goes to show that one a person gains a certain level of fame, they get to behave inconsiderately out loud.
Pages 1-126 of 309 - The author thrashes her reader with beautifully written expressions of pain and agony over a very ordinary end to a marriage she, like her husband, was very unhappy in.
Page 127 of 309 - “Sometimes I feel like I titled this book Kittens and Rainbows, and then I wrote hell.” Yes. Yes you did.
Page 158 of 309 - A glimmer of hope that the author is starting her healing journey.
Page 168 of 309 - Just kidding! Still sad and bitter and self-pitying.
Page 181 of 309 - Oh, and now we have to hear your pandemic experience? Great. Just great.
Page 185 of 309 - She starts dating someone and has fun. Oh, so we’re going to eat, pray, love this thing and find happiness only when another man comes into the picture?
Pages 187-249 of 309 - No, no. It’s not eat love pray. (But it’s almost as self-absorbed.) She’s still sad and miserable and angry. New man disappears from the story. Thankfully.
Page 250 of 309 - Some healing finally starts. Thank God!
Page 258 of 309 - Trying to prove she is magically blessed while her ex-husband is getting chewed up by karma. So, still bitter. No healing in sight and we are more than 80% through the book.
Page 269-288 of 309 - Ruminate. Ruminate. Ruminate.
Page 289 of 309 - The author considers than maybe she should be been more honest in titling her book but then again, heck no! She tells her reader she realizes now it’s a call to action for how she should live her life. She just won’t demonstrate putting this into action in any way whatsoever at any point in the rest of the book.
Pages 290-309 - Hey, she says, I’m putting my life back together and I love my life and I love myself. OMFG, lady, are you serious? You drag your reader through 290 pages of wallowing and suffering with almost no real self-reflection or demonstrable growth for a payoff of platitudes in last twenty pages. I mean, to be fair, you did say over and over again that this book was a “tell-mine” book but did you seriously never consider that you are asking readers to read a lot of pages of self pity and dragging your ex-husband to no end?
This book goes to show that one a person gains a certain level of fame, they get to behave inconsiderately out loud.
August 21, 2022
Overwhelmingly tender. Maggie is one of those souls that you can feel inexplicably connected to through their writing. I've never read pieces of myself so clearly in a memoir.
April 21, 2023
i’m torn about this one…on one hand it’s poignant and poetic, but on the other it’s repetitive and lowkey grating. maybe i’d enjoy this more in another time of life.
May 6, 2023
I just don’t want to wallow in the repetitive details of somebody’s divorce for 300+ pages. Sorry.
May 22, 2023
Maggie Smith is a gorgeous wordsmith, and I jumped at the opportunity to read an ARC of her upcoming memoir (thanks to Simon & Schuster and Netgalley). Like many others, I initially came to Smith's work through her poem "Good Bones," and have followed her since. Her poetry combines a thoughtful, focused recognition of the flashing beauty to be found in ordinary moments with sharp bursts of wonderful, sardonic humor.
Her more recent book of short, inspirational notes and quotes, Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change, veered into slightly more of a self-help territory, which was less compelling to me as reader, but the author was going through a divorce and, according to the jacket copy, these little short notes and quotes helped pull her through tough days. Fair enough.
Now we have "You Could Make this Place Beautiful," pitched as a memoir, but really something closer to an expanded version of Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change, as it is comprised of fairly short episodes and meditations, again revolving around the author's divorce.
In this book, Smith puts enormous energy and heart towards using her powers for good—she attempts to spin straw into gold, to metaphorize the heck out of her truly lousy experiences, and to work over and over the various elements of her own story to try to find the language to contain and even transform her memories and experience into something that could still be meaningful for her and her children.
As Smith notes, the first drafts of the book were written during and in the immediate aftermath of a drawn-out divorce proceeding. Perhaps the memoir would have benefitted from a bit more time and perspective. An argument can be made that watching a person struggle through tough stuff can be instructive, but I do think that real wisdom usually emerges once a person is safely on dry land and not in the middle of the howling storm lashing herself to the mast.
Smith is an extremely nice woman, so some of the raw, righteous, bitter fury that any woman in her position would certainly feel ends up squeezed through that wretched machine, the Midwestern woman’s internal self-deprecator, which has an uncanny way of redirecting anger into more acceptable, containable, emotions such as sadness and sorrow. (At its worst it skews towards martyrdom, which, thankfully, Smith avoids.) But, even smart, thoughtful Smith stares at the wreckage of her marriage in disbelief, seeming to ask the reader: “Can you even believe it? Can you even believe what this guy did to me and his children? How he stomped on our hearts?”
Like most middle-aged women, I have spent many hours listening to my intelligent, highly competent friends—who have expended years of their lives doing most of the emotional labor in their relationships and living with husbands that often act like privileged man-babies—bewail their utter shock at the really crappy things that these same men do and say during breakups. And yes, I surely can believe it. But, like Smith’s ex-husband—who continually implied that her writing was not real work, who resented her success and gave her a hard time when she went out of town to give readings, who called her back early from trips for the most inconsequential of reasons—most of these guys showed their stripes long before the divorce.
My own sense is that in another five years, Smith will feel nothing but gratitude to be out of this marriage, as tough as this moment may be. In the meantime, more power to her for trying to turn a difficult period in her life into prose.
Her more recent book of short, inspirational notes and quotes, Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change, veered into slightly more of a self-help territory, which was less compelling to me as reader, but the author was going through a divorce and, according to the jacket copy, these little short notes and quotes helped pull her through tough days. Fair enough.
Now we have "You Could Make this Place Beautiful," pitched as a memoir, but really something closer to an expanded version of Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change, as it is comprised of fairly short episodes and meditations, again revolving around the author's divorce.
In this book, Smith puts enormous energy and heart towards using her powers for good—she attempts to spin straw into gold, to metaphorize the heck out of her truly lousy experiences, and to work over and over the various elements of her own story to try to find the language to contain and even transform her memories and experience into something that could still be meaningful for her and her children.
As Smith notes, the first drafts of the book were written during and in the immediate aftermath of a drawn-out divorce proceeding. Perhaps the memoir would have benefitted from a bit more time and perspective. An argument can be made that watching a person struggle through tough stuff can be instructive, but I do think that real wisdom usually emerges once a person is safely on dry land and not in the middle of the howling storm lashing herself to the mast.
Smith is an extremely nice woman, so some of the raw, righteous, bitter fury that any woman in her position would certainly feel ends up squeezed through that wretched machine, the Midwestern woman’s internal self-deprecator, which has an uncanny way of redirecting anger into more acceptable, containable, emotions such as sadness and sorrow. (At its worst it skews towards martyrdom, which, thankfully, Smith avoids.) But, even smart, thoughtful Smith stares at the wreckage of her marriage in disbelief, seeming to ask the reader: “Can you even believe it? Can you even believe what this guy did to me and his children? How he stomped on our hearts?”
Like most middle-aged women, I have spent many hours listening to my intelligent, highly competent friends—who have expended years of their lives doing most of the emotional labor in their relationships and living with husbands that often act like privileged man-babies—bewail their utter shock at the really crappy things that these same men do and say during breakups. And yes, I surely can believe it. But, like Smith’s ex-husband—who continually implied that her writing was not real work, who resented her success and gave her a hard time when she went out of town to give readings, who called her back early from trips for the most inconsequential of reasons—most of these guys showed their stripes long before the divorce.
My own sense is that in another five years, Smith will feel nothing but gratitude to be out of this marriage, as tough as this moment may be. In the meantime, more power to her for trying to turn a difficult period in her life into prose.
November 21, 2023
Reading some of the 4-5 star reviews I am adding my two cents here at the risk of sounding like a cold hearted bastard: Maggie Smith is a great wordsmith, however this book is not beautiful like its cover, and it doesn’t have “good bones” like her poem. It is more like a collection of random memories, actually more like recordings of random therapy sessions. Despite all the lyrical sentences each vignette leaves a sour taste in your mouth. Divorces are usually ugly so I was expecting sad and sorrow pontifications but mostly sensed depression and anger here. Paraphrasing Atwood, word after word after word is power, and Smith uses that power to stick it to her ex. It’s not always what she shares but also her omissions and preserving the self-serving pieces. The unanswered question does not seem to be forgiveness. I am really sorry for what she went through, and hope she finds peace after all this, but she could have made this memoir much more beautiful.
May 9, 2023
read it in a day and will read again. loved that it was essays.
May 17, 2023
I cannot recommend this book enough -- and especially to anyone who is interested in writing or crafting nonfiction; and especially anyone going (or who has gone) through a divorce or trying to metabolize or understand infidelity. But this book is hard to read; I felt myself revisiting so much of the trauma I experienced after I found notes my husband (now ex-husband) sent to his mistress.
YOU COULD MAKE THIS PLACE BEAUTIFUL is a memoir and it's not. It's a tell-all and it's not. It is haunting and compelling. It is lyrical and prose-like. As a writer (and writing teacher), this book is everything. It's innovative, original and emotion-packed. It's unlike anything I've ever read and this is why it's so, so, so good.
Told in a series of short stories, quotes, poems and vignettes, Maggie Smith weaves in repeating phrases, varying metaphors, and recurring scenes. This is one of the best books I've read this year. Maggie's words stayed with me long after I put the book down.
A lot of this book explores navigating child-rearing while going through a separation and divorce. Although I don't have any children, Maggie's words and this book still spoke to me. And her relationship with her son is so heart-warming. It's the light that carries this book.
Bravo, Maggie! I want to attend one of your writing workshops. I want to read all your poems. I want you to have all the happiness and peace. After reading this book, I feel like we're friends or maybe even kindred spirits; so I know, you deserve it all.
YOU COULD MAKE THIS PLACE BEAUTIFUL is a memoir and it's not. It's a tell-all and it's not. It is haunting and compelling. It is lyrical and prose-like. As a writer (and writing teacher), this book is everything. It's innovative, original and emotion-packed. It's unlike anything I've ever read and this is why it's so, so, so good.
Told in a series of short stories, quotes, poems and vignettes, Maggie Smith weaves in repeating phrases, varying metaphors, and recurring scenes. This is one of the best books I've read this year. Maggie's words stayed with me long after I put the book down.
A lot of this book explores navigating child-rearing while going through a separation and divorce. Although I don't have any children, Maggie's words and this book still spoke to me. And her relationship with her son is so heart-warming. It's the light that carries this book.
Bravo, Maggie! I want to attend one of your writing workshops. I want to read all your poems. I want you to have all the happiness and peace. After reading this book, I feel like we're friends or maybe even kindred spirits; so I know, you deserve it all.
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