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Cover of You Could Make This Place Beautiful

You Could Make This Place Beautiful

by Maggie Smith

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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.…

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"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."
NPR Books We Love — 2023 · apps.npr.org
Goodreads Choice Awards — 2023 · goodreads.com