2024~22. You Could Make Things Beautiful

Maggie Smith. 2023.

This memoir, written more as poetry than prose, is a writer's delight, with that lyrical, fancy rhythm and pace of a proficient, well-trained author.  It is the kind of writing that intellectuals typically seem to love and that I find slightly pretentious and haughty.  There are some relatable things in this story and I am certain there is an audience for whom this story of love, betrayal, divorce, and slogging on in the drudgery of reliable, consistent, perfect parenting , but I am not that audience.  Being boring in her reliability for her children, while something she is proud of, left me sad for her.  The book itself is sad, as she laments her lack of control over her life and her children's lives.  Much of the book felt whiny and lacking the insight her privilege gives her to complain about the things she finds crushing.  I don't know if that is why I didn't like it, but I just didn't, even though the "breaking of the third wall" to talk to me, the reader, as she writes the story was unique and the circling back to parts of the story in interesting ways that has the narrative fold back on itself so the non-linear storytelling makes sense and feels more like a brilliant writing strategy than confusing.

​Not recommended.

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