Overview

'Life, like a poem, is a series of choices' In her long-awaited debut memoir, You Could Make This Place Beautiful, award-winning poet Maggie Smith explores in lyrical vignettes the end of her marriage and the beginning of a surprising new life. With the spirit of reflection and empathy she's known for, Smith interweaves snapshots of a life with meditations on secrets, anger, forgiveness and narrative itself. 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 an argument for possibility. Smith reveals how, in the aftermath of loss, we can discover our power and make something new. Something beautiful.

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9781805302421

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Reviews

'This book is extraordinary' - ANN PATCHETT 'Rich in nuance and unrelenting in its honesty, Smith's memoir is a bittersweet study in both grief and joy' - TIME 'Reminds you that you can [ . . . ] survive deep loss, sink into life's deep beauty, and constantly, constantly make yourself new' - GLENNON DOYLE 'A poet's memoir . . . [Smith] has an uncanny ability to boil down giant ideas into tiny, dense sentences that are both playful and heartbreaking' - SHONDALAND 'Smith turns to prose to chronicle the end of her marriage and the hard, beautiful work of loving and valuing herself' - PEOPLE

This book is extraordinary -- ANN PATCHETT Rich in nuance and unrelenting in its honesty, Smith's memoir is a bittersweet study in both grief and joy * * TIME * * Reminds you that you can [ . . . ] survive deep loss, sink into life's deep beauty, and constantly, constantly make yourself new -- GLENNON DOYLE A poet's memoir . . . [Smith] has an uncanny ability to boil down giant ideas into tiny, dense sentences that are both playful and heartbreaking * * SHONDALAND * * Smith turns to prose to chronicle the end of her marriage and the hard, beautiful work of loving and valuing herself. * * PEOPLE * * In this lightning bolt of a debut memoir, Maggie Smith gives us the truth of healing in form as much as story: getting through is no pretty, linear narrative. It's one chapter forward and five chapters back. You Could Make This Place Beautiful gave me back a part of myself I thought was gone for good: the knowledge that beauty isn't something out there to find. It's in us. -- MEGAN STIELSTRA, author of THE WRONG WAY TO SAVE YOUR LIFE You Could Make This Place Beautiful is a sparklingly brilliant memoir-in-vignettes that only Maggie Smith could write. Yet this is a book for everyone-who among us has never had our world upended by the loss of a relationship? Maggie Smith's powerful mastery of language, and amazing ability to portray life in all its rich messiness, is on full display in this bold, brutally candid, and yes, beautiful, book. -- ISAAC FITZGERALD, New York Times bestselling author of DIRTBAG, MASSACHUSETTS A beautiful book...stunning. -- Oprah Daily Beautifully written... Smith should be just as celebrated for her prose. * * Town and Country * * Listen, you may not need me to tell you what you already know about the shining star that is Maggie Smith, but you can certainly add me to the chorus of those singing her praises about You Could Make This Place Beautiful. Among her singular gifts as a writer are the way she swiftly brings her poetry to her prose; her willingness to show up to the page with aspirational levels of vulnerability, grace, and joy; and a clarity of heart amid the heartbreak that together makes this a moving and gorgeous must read. -- ELIZABETH CRANE, author of THIS STORY WIL CHANGE

Author Information

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, New Yorker, Paris Review, Best American Poetry and more. @MaggieSmithPoet | maggiesmithpoet.com

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