You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir
Maggie Smith
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
You Could Make This Place Beautiful: A Memoir
Maggie Smith
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
Rave
Positive
Mixed
Pan
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..
You Could Make This Place Beautiful could easily be described as brutal in its telling. It is a brutal, and brutally honest, reflection on some of the lowest and hardest moments of Smith's life. But in that darkness, Smith finds--and shares--the promised beauty.
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..