You Could Make This Place Beautiful

"In 2016, poet Maggie Smith went viral with her poem “Good Bones.” She wrote: “The world is at least / fifty percent terrible,” noting that “Any decent realtor” would try to sell you a place with good bones with the claim: “You could make this place beautiful.” Smith comes back to that line as the launching point of this lyrical, bittersweet memoir about her divorce – making something beautiful out of a horrible situation. (As her career skyrocketed, Smith says, her marriage crumbled.) If you’re looking for a bitchy tell-all about her marriage fracturing, this isn’t it. Instead, Smith is working through her pain, page by page, in a heartbreaking and exquisitely rendered collection of vignettes, poems and brief musings."