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Get startedYou Could Make This Place Beautiful
A Memoir
Narrator
Maggie Smith
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Length
7 hours 46 minutes
Language
English
Bookseller recommendation
“A memoir about the dissolution of marriage is not something I would normally gravitate towards, but I'm so glad I decided to give it a shot. You Could Make This Place Beautiful is about so much more than that - uneven division of household labor, the dismissal of creative careers, the intuitiveness of children, and how to rebuild a life after betrayal. Chef's kiss, five stars, etc etc.”
— Maggie • Carmichael's Bookstore
Bookseller recommendation
“Poet Maggie Smith narrates her memoir of gorgeous prose about her heartbreaking divorce. Maggie Smith is a lovely writer and explores the purpose of memoir as she mines her formerly married and currently divorcing selves. I've seen this referred to as a middle-aged coming-of-age and I think that's an apt description. You Could Make This Place Beautiful is about life, grief, motherhood, and family, and how you pull it together (during a pandemic, no less) for yourself and your kids as you try to make sense of your life partner suddenly walking out the door. ”
— Julie • Honest Dog Books
Bookseller recommendation
“What a moving book about becoming yourself after a painful divorce. The quotes that are included, the questions asked, and the vignettes of a life lived both in duress and in triumph all come together for a bittersweet study of joy and grief. A wonderful read. ”
— Andrea • Bookstore1Sarasota
Bookseller recommendation
“The story of Maggie Smith's divorce (the American poet, not the British actress) is absolutely breathtaking. I sent it immediately to my best friend, labeled 'Required Reading Drop Everything'! If you like Glennon Doyle's books and podcast, if you liked Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, you will love this. I can not recommend more highly. ”
— Em • A Great Good Place for Books
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NPR Best Book of the Year • Time Best Book of the Year • Oprah Daily Best Memoir of the Year
“A bittersweet study in both grief and joy.” —Time
“A sparklingly beautiful memoir-in-vignettes” (Isaac Fitzgerald, New York Times bestselling author) that explores coming of age in your middle age—from the bestselling poet and author of Keep Moving.
“Life, like a poem, is a series of choices.”
In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself. The book begins with one woman’s personal 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 “extraordinary” (Ann Patchett) in the way that it reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new and beautiful.
Maggie Smith is the award-winning author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Good Bones, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, Lamp of the Body, and the national bestsellers Goldenrod and Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received several Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, two Academy of American Poets Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published, appearing in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Best American Poetry, and more. You can follow her on social media @MaggieSmithPoet.
Maggie Smith is the award-winning author of You Could Make This Place Beautiful, Good Bones, The Well Speaks of Its Own Poison, Lamp of the Body, and the national bestsellers Goldenrod and Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change. A 2011 recipient of a Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Smith has also received several Individual Excellence Awards from the Ohio Arts Council, two Academy of American Poets Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and fellowships from the Sustainable Arts Foundation and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She has been widely published, appearing in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Best American Poetry, and more. You can follow her on social media @MaggieSmithPoet.
