Poet Maggie Smith charts path to healing in 'You Could Make This Place Beautiful': 5 new books
In search of something good to read? USA TODAY's Barbara VanDenburgh scopes out the shelves for this week’s hottest new book releases. All books are on sale Tuesday.
For more must-read book recommendations, check out the 20 books we are most excited for this spring, including the latest installment of Don Winslow's crime saga, "City of Dreams" and Laura Dern and Diane Ladd's memoir, "Honey, Baby, Mine"; our favorite books of 2022 that received perfect four-star reviews; and the juiciest recent celebrity memoirs from Matthew Perry, Tom Felton, William Shatner, Jennette McCurdy and more.
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‘You Could Make This Place Beautiful’
By Maggie Smith (One Signal, nonfiction)
The poet went viral in 2016 with her poem "Good Bones," a line from which this memoir gets its title. Shortly after that success, her marriage – in which her work outside the home had already been a thorn – began to fall apart.
In the book, she writes in lyrical vignettes of finding herself in middle age after the disintegration of her marriage and her path to healing with meditations on anger and forgiveness as she confronts modern womanhood.
"Smith’s conjuring of beauty through pain and her special blend of vulnerability and encouragement go down like a healing tonic," says a starred Booklist review.
More new books:
"It. Goes. So. Fast.: The Year of No Do-Overs," by Mary Louise Kelly (Holt, nonfiction): With her eldest son on the cusp of going away for college, the NPR reporter confronts childhood's expiration date and embraces her son's final year at home in a book that will resonate with parents everywhere.
"After the Miracle: The Political Crusades of Helen Keller," by Max Wallace (Grand Central, nonfiction): Wallace pens a major biography of the blind and deaf disability rights icon, shining a spotlight on her lifelong fight for social justice and the work she did with her voice once she found it.
"Yours Truly," by Abby Jimenez (Forever, fiction): Emergency room doctors Briana Ortiz and Jacob Maddox make a deal: he to donate a kidney to her brother, and she to pose as his girlfriend for a social event. Who wants to bet those pretend sparks turn into real ones?
"The Dead Are Gods," by Eirinie Carson (Melville House, nonfiction): Carson navigates life, memory and feelings after the unexpected death of her best friend in 2018. A starred Kirkus review calls the book "as elegant and moving as a grief memoir can be."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Maggie Smith's 'You Could Make This Place Beautiful,' more new books
