You Could Make This Place Beautiful, by Maggie Smith

Finding the narrative arc of a life actually lived

Apr 15, 2023

Memoirs with Melissa shares bimonthly reviews intended to expose readers to diverse authors and life experiences. To see more of what I’m reading, browse my virtual memoir shelf on Goodreads.

Last year, there was a school shooting in Texas during my kids’ last week before summer break. The next day, a poet friend handed me a printed copy of Good Bones by Maggie Smith. We’d just finished a morning beach walk to process the week’s events, and the poem summoned tears I didn’t know I needed to cry. So when I saw Smith was coming out with a memoir, I requested an advance copy and devoured it in two days.

You Could Make This Place Beautiful borrows its title from the last line of Smith’s viral poem. In achingly beautiful, relatable prose, she takes the reader on a journey through the rise and fall of her marriage, the rewards and demands of parenthood, and rediscovering herself in middle age. What I found especially unique about this memoir was how she breaks the fourth wall to discuss the challenges of imposing a traditional narrative arc on a life actually lived.

What I found especially unique about this memoir was how she breaks the fourth wall to discuss the challenges of imposing a traditional narrative arc on a life actually lived.

As someone who has wrestled with my own narrative on the page, I learned so much from Smith’s innovative yet transparent approach to deciding what’s hers to tell and what to intentionally leave out. From the first pages, she dispels the myth of the omniscient narrator. All she has to offer is her own experience and reflections. In the prologue, she files through a list of potential beginnings and lands on an inanimate object, a pine cone, which takes the reader straight to her story’s hook (or inciting event?)—the discovery of her husband’s infidelity.

In the same manner that Good Bones speaks to any parent trying to preserve their children's outlook on a world filled with harsh realities, You Could Make This Place Beautiful articulates thoughts and feelings we all have as partners, parents, creatives, and humans doing the best we can at life. If you’re considering a splurge in your book budget, this new release (out April 11, 2023) is a definite contender.

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