You Could Make This Place Beautiful (Unabridged)
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3.8 • 34 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
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.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
With this soul-stirring memoir, an award-winning poet pieces together a picture of life after divorce. After the breakup of her marriage, Maggie Smith is forced to step back and reexamine herself and her family from a fresh perspective, offering up fascinating observations that come across like a series of lyrical postcards. Along her winding and emotional path, Smith unpacks arresting memories, like sharing a bath with the boyfriend who would one day become her ex-husband in their first apartment and the pain of discovering his infidelity. In vivid, fluid sentences, Smith narrates her story with heart and humor. We loved hearing her uncover deep truths about marriage, gender roles, parenting, and human nature. You Could Make This Place Beautiful is a daring, intimate, and unforgettable book.
Customer Reviews
I really wanted her to make this beautiful
But she didn’t. Disappointing.
Tackles deep heartache with a poet’s grace
Ignore the rude review from someone who clearly didn’t 1) listen to the sample audio OR 2) take two seconds to read the book description before purchasing. This is a deeply thoughtful, curious confrontation with the dissolution of a marriage. Maggie relays her deepest heartbreaks and rages with a clear-eyed grace that seeks to understand. I would expect no less from this acclaimed poet, who is so much more than any single label anyone would seek to diminish her by. Reviews like that are the reason other writers—among them wives and mothers—will feel heard and understood by this incredible book.
Incredible
I listed to Maggie Smith’s book ‘Keep Moving’ while going through a divorce, and it was so encouraging. She offers such a depth of witnessing to the things women/humans feel they are alone in experiencing.