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Price: $19.99 - $13.99
(as of Jun 24, 2025 22:16:36 UTC – Details)
INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NPR Best Book of the Year • TimeBest Book of the Year • Oprah DailyBest 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.
From the Publisher
ASIN : B0B3Y8QQ6R
Publisher : Atria/One Signal Publishers
Accessibility : Learn more
Publication date : April 11, 2023
Language : English
File size : 3.5 MB
Screen Reader : Supported
Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
X-Ray : Enabled
Word Wise : Enabled
Print length : 316 pages
ISBN-13 : 978-1982185879
Page Flip : Enabled
Customers say
Customers praise the book’s blend of poetry and memoir, describing it as stunning with beautiful structure. They find it a heartfelt story that’s relatable and soul-touching, particularly appreciating its reflection on true heartbreak and more than just a divorce narrative. Customers find the book readable, with one noting its short chapters, and they appreciate its rawness and hopefulness. The pacing receives mixed reactions, with some finding it tedious and repetitive.
