Bread of Angels: A Memoir

I don’t know what brought me to Smith’s [Just Kids] back in 2012. Her music is not to my taste, but she absolutely is: I loved the memoir and have pursued her entire list. This new memoir is my favorite of everything.

It includes lots of her childhood and family; some of her music and fellow musicians/industry; some of her marriage and children; a revelation (which I beg readers to discover on their own rather than via reviews or tags); and less of what she’s already written about elsewhere. Much of her writing after Just Kids seemed ephemeral and even indecipherable to me (I characterized [Year of the Monkey] as a fever dream). Here, Smith is more linear again, deeply communicating with the sense evocation of the poet. It's gently show more sad and full of loss, and also brave and optimistic. show less

I was fortunate enough to see Patti Smith perform in Medford, MA, where copies of this book were included in the ticket price. Not a big fan back in the day, I became a convert after listening to the audio versions of Just Kids and M Train, her prior memoirs. This one falls in between the other two and focuses on her life with husband Fred Sonic Smith of the notorious MC5 band out of Detroit. When they meet, Patti gives up NYC and her band life, marries Fred, moves to Detroit, and has two children with him, with the family living a blissful life in a small house in a marsh and writing on a decrepit unseaworthy boat. The idyll ends with his death on November 4, 1994 of heart failure, the same date that Robert Mapplethorpe was born. The show more memoir conveys the pain of Patti's losses of her brother Todd, Mapplethorpe, and her parents but also the stabilizing force of her care and love for her son and daughter. The trilogy gives the reader a closeness with Patti Smith, with her journeys, her ever-strong quest for knowledge and for her devotion to poets and mystics of our age and times gone by. At 78, she is still in fine voice and still writes absorbing words. You can sign up for her emails and she shares her days and ideas in that distinctive voice. She is a global treasure.

Quote: "Sometimes after a concert we'd all gather in my room, laughing until dawn about nothing. It wasn't happiness, but something at the time that seemed more intoxicating; it was abandon." show less

An ethereal being, a person so fully herself that she reveals most everyone I know (including me) as merely players. And her certainty is so generous, a pure acceptance that each person can know themselves, and their view of the world is their life and destiny if they have the conviction to realize and honor that self. Patti never thinks that she knows how you should live, just that you should look inside, and stop listening to others who tell you how you should live.

Every Patti Smith book is transformational, but until now, I have never thought any of them measure up to Just Kids. This is every bit as wonderful, her words as miraculous and true. Rather than an epoch if Patti's life, this is a survey, from birth (actually gestation) to show more the current moment. This simply could not be more beautiful, more immersive, more perfect. A best-of-the-best for me. An imperative read for anyone who wants to start to understand the soul of an artist.

I listened to this, recited by this South Jersey girl. Draw=drawl, pillow=pilla, and on and on. Let Patti tell you her story. I read Just Kids in print, and this made me plan to listen to that book soon, so she can tell me her story in her own voice. show less

A memoir, fragmented, with eloquent passages about Smith’s early life, glimpses of her later life, dancing lightly past her life already recorded in Just Kids and M Train, circling around her marriage. Epiphanies abound when she goes with the flow, and you allow yourself to follow.
For me, the notes about her albums were unnecessary, but perhaps will be fascinating for others.
I’m unsure that the book adds substantially to what Smith has previously written, and it really requires knowledge of her previous books, but a comforting read.

I've long been a fan of Patti's writing and photography. This volume is more conventional memoir than say 'M Train' which is more travelogue, and is very much her acknowledgement of the loved ones and friends who have filled her life and inspired her.

Her early life full of health issues survived, and an early widow, her buoyancy is something to be admired. Her multi-facetted creativity to be envied perhaps. Someone whose company would be greatly enjoyed.