Review - You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith
I received a free review copy of this book through NetGalley. All opinions are my own.
Summing It Up
Poet Maggie Smith’s memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, is an emotional and powerful look at marriage, divorce, and parenting. She tries to make sense of her life using what she knows best: writing craft. She looks at her life story as a plot, even while urging readers not to do the same. She examines the story structure of her life. She even envisions it as a stage play.
All these devices help the reader see more deeply into the author’s struggle to reconcile her expectations versus her reality, to make sense of the major changes that come with the ending of a marriage and the beginning of something new.
While this book is not a straightforward narrative, it leads readers from one point to the next in an artful way. Rather than a story, it is a series of essays pieced together like fragmented thoughts. And just like the author, the reader is left with questions. That is the point, after all – we never get all the answers to life’s biggest questions. I especially appreciated the author’s conclusion that she could move on despite uncertainty.
I was intrigued by her efforts to write her own truth while protecting those she wrote about. She never names her ex-husband. She discusses her children, but explicitly tells readers when she won’t be showing certain parts of their lives. I have never read a memoir that dealt with hard issues while maintaining this level of privacy before. But it works and it feels even more personal as the author tells us what she’s not going to tell us.
Even as this is a book about the author’s own divorce, the effort she makes to see her own responsibility is obvious. It doesn’t feel like she’s blaming or vindictive. I felt that her description of what it is to be a wife is very apt. She was a woman who loved someone and worked and sacrificed to try to make it work. Then, she was left a single parent, working to provide for herself and her children, while learning to embrace her own power.
I loved it. I already plan to read it again.
Read It
You Could Make This Place Beautiful by Maggie Smith is set for release on April 11, 2023.
