You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir
Written by Maggie Smith
Narrated by Maggie Smith
4/5
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About this audiobook
“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.
Editor's Note
Lyrical…
In lyrical prose, poet Smith (“Keep Moving”) chronicles her journey of heartbreak and healing after a difficult divorce, discussing themes like gender roles, the patriarchy, and motherhood with striking vulnerability. Above all, this memoir proves that the end is often a new beginning.
Maggie Smith
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.
More audiobooks from Maggie Smith
Goldenrod: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Kelly: More Than My Share of It All Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Keep Moving: Notes on Loss, Creativity, and Change Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
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Reviews for You Could Make This Place Beautiful
139 ratings10 reviews
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5I didn’t like this. Narrated very slowly; I listened on 2.5x and it felt like the right speed. I never speed up audio books past like .25 so this is saying something.
The book is about her divorce but she shares literally no details about it or what happened, just vaguely references that he did “something” but then also sticks up for him. It’s like… it’s OKAY to be mad at your ex husband. You don’t need to remind us he has a side too. She also puts in many “dear reader, you don’t need to know the details of the conversation telling my children we were divorcing.” Like.. ok? Just don’t put it in.
The language used is VERY flowery to the point of it reading like a poorly done poem, almost to the point of it being difficult to follow the storyline. I keep stopping and wondering if I missed some important paragraph or chapter detailing WHAT exactly she’s going through.
She is mostly sharing her sad memories of life when married. It’s not inspiring, it’s a sad wallowing when he has clearly moved on. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Incrível e muito fácil de se identificar com cada palavra.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5So beautiful, and raw, and real... I've read it (listened to it) in two sittings. I was drawn into the writer's worlds and words, and now I'm grieving its end. Never have I been so willing to start a book upon reaching its last page.
Read this. Even if you think it's nothing to do with you. It has. Will find out. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Omg. I’ve still got 3 hrs to go and I almost always finish books. This one needed lots of editing: she’s a poet—a wordsmith—and in love with her litany of words, like interminable lists obsessively documenting everything….like going through a hoarder’s pile.
I enjoyed the first part but the glum victimhood of the last third is too much. A good therapist was needed. - Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Some parts are slow and others are so deep. Worth taking the time to read
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Insightful and honest. I loved it. Even the parts that tore me to pieces.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Heartfelt and honest. Beautiful journey through a hard time. A good primer on relationships.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book is beautifully written. The experience of the author is unfortunately too familiar, but hearing someone else’s process was cleansing and cathartic. The language is precise through her difficult journey. I am grateful to have stumbled upon it.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Gad, everyone is traumatized. Sick of hearing about it. Pity party number 99.
1 person found this helpful
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Boriiiing, couldn’t get past the first chapter. And really strange way to tell a story, like the author is on drugs or smth.