Berkeley Heights Public Library

You Could Make This Place Beautiful

by Maggie Smith

Book list When it was published in the summer of 2016, Smith's (Keep Moving, 2020) poem "Good Bones," the closing line of which is this book's title, went viral and brought her a bewildering level of exposure. At the same time, it marked another milestone, as the author sees it now: the beginning of the end of her marriage, in which the subject of her work outside the home was already a sticking point. In tandem with this tectonic shift, another: the poet began to write in prose. In inhalable chapters (some titles reoccur, like "A Friend Says Every Book Begins with an Unanswerable Question," and "A Note on Foreshadowing"), Smith paints a marriage backwards and forwards, beginning with her—or "The Finder's"—discovery of a betrayal. Careful to remind readers that this isn't a tell-all, but a "tell-mine," Smith opens her heart like a book, dog-earing moments both painful and joyous: falling in and out of love, losing pregnancies, having children and mothering them. It's also a lesson in the craft of putting one's life on the page, full of notes, asides, and questions: "How can this story—this experience—be useful to anyone other than me? How can I make this material into a tool you can use?" Smith's conjuring of beauty through pain and her special blend of vulnerability and encouragement go down like a healing tonic.HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: Smith's writing has struck a chord with many, many readers, and this is her most personal book yet.

Kirkus The noted poet digs further into life after divorce. The title of this book is the last line of Smith’s 2015 poem “Good Bones,” which went viral. Unfortunately, “my marriage was never the same after that poem.” The author first charted her response to the pain of her husband's infidelity in a series of Twitter posts that became a well-received book called Keep Moving. Then came Keep Moving: The Journal, and now, this memoir tracking Smith’s attempt to heal herself. Formally, it has much in common with This Story Will Change, Elizabeth Crane's recent book on the same topic. Both Crane and Smith employ the popular technique of using many short sections with long, ironic, and/or repeating titles. Here, there are 12 chapters titled “A FRIEND SAYS EVERY BOOK BEGINS WITH AN UNANSWERABLE QUESTION,” suggesting a dozen different possible responses, and there are four chapters titled “THE MATERIAL,” which ask whether this book can be of any value to others. Smith combines these elements with other narrative gimmicks, such as addresses directly to the “Reader,” single quotes from other writers floating on a page, italicized sections, and a few of her own poems. Some readers will skim these sections, but without them, this would have been more of a magazine article than a full book. The highlight of the text is the author's children, Violet and Rhett. They say such great things, both funny and sad, blessedly not metafictional, often profound. “A few months after my husband moved out of the house,” Smith reports, “I was trying to calm and reassure Rhett, then six years old, at bedtime. He said, ‘I know, I know. I have a mom who loves me, and I have a dad who loves me. But I don’t have a family.’ ” It’s arguably the most memorable passage in the book. As a wise woman once entreated herself, keep moving. Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Publishers Weekly Poet Smith (Goldenrod) eschews the traditional memoir format in this mixed take on her recent divorce and its aftermath. “I’ve wondered if I can even call this book a memoir,” she writes. “It’s not something that happened in the past that I’m recalling for you.... I’m still living through this story as I write it.” In winkingly titled chapters (“Email, Subject Line: Update;” “A Half Hour to Cry”), Smith details the collapse of her marriage with a bard’s eye for detail: a postcard with another woman’s name in her husband’s messenger bag, “open, its unbuckled flap hanging over the back of the chair”; the discovery of half the family’s savings withdrawn after an argument; and coparenting, through separation and a pandemic, before her husband moved 500 miles away. Smith often breaks the fourth wall to explain her writing process, which reads as a mix of self-effacing, self-knowing, and, occasionally, self-satisfied, especially when accompanied by aphoristic asides. (“A memoir is about ‘the art of memory,’ and part of the art is in the curation,” she writes in an imagined response to an imagined reader’s query. “Next question.”) This lyrical personal reflection is undoubtedly affecting, but as often it feels affected. Agent: Joy Tutela, David Black Literary. (Apr.)

Library Journal In her memoir, award-winning poet Smith (Good Bones) uses poetic vignettes to dissect the ending of her marriage and her journey toward self-love. Smith starts with her husband's infidelity, something she tackled in her 2020 book, Keep Moving. She moves effortlessly between first and third person, short sections, repeating titles, and recurring themes to examine a life she never imagined for herself. The author never refers to her ex-husband (the addresser) or his lover (the addressee) by name, keeping them both on the outskirts of the new life she is creating. But her children, Violet and Rhett, play a central role as she leans on them, her family, and friends as she makes sense of motherhood, gender roles, and power dynamics that exist in every relationship. Through self-interrogation, Smith crafts her experiences into ones that connect to the larger struggles of women's lives and how people work to create something new out of places in their lives that have ghosts and hold secrets. VERDICT This innovative memoir will attract readers who are drawn to poetry hidden in well-written prose and memoirs and will appeal to those who seek meaning in reinventing their lives.—Rebekah J. Buchanan

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