Bread of Angels

A radiant new memoir from beloved artist and writer Patti Smith, author of the National Book Award Winner Just Kids.

'God whispers through a crease in the wallpaper', writes Patti Smith in this moving account of her life. Her childhood imagination blossoms in the condemned housing complex where Smith grows up. Captain of her loyal sibling army, she vanquishes bullies, communes with the king of tortoises and searches for silver pennies.

We follow Smith through her teen years and creative evolution: Arthur Rimbaud and Bob Dylan emerge as early influences, poetry collides with performance, leading to a rock and roll band and the recording of Horses.

Smith leaves public life to marry her one true love, Fred Sonic Smith. On a canal in St Clair Shores, they build a home and start a family while each day she enters a room of her own at awn to write. When her reverie is shattered by a series of profound losses, Smith cares for her children in the aftermath; slowly, she begins to write again.

Both a prequel and a sequel to Just Kids, this memoir is an ode to love, sacrifice and the artist's calling.

Review

Patti Smith's Bread of Angels is a triumph -- Joseph O'Connor ― Irish Times, Books of the Year

Smith's eye for life's everyday transcendence rarely fails her ― Sunday Times, Books of the Year

Quietly sacred, utterly beautiful ― Service 95

Reads more like a gospel or a beat prose-poem than a conventional autobiography . Smith is acutely aware of being part of a dying breed, those who grew up outdoors, devoured books - and fell in love. At a time when love has never been so undervalued, when "boyfriends are embarrassing", according to Vogue, when the union of two humans is mere content, it is lovely to read about love as sacred. Smith, once again, shows us a better way to be ourselves ― Evening Standard

The post-pandemic flood of artist memoirs continues, but Patti Smith stands apart. you see the rebel artist being born in stop-motion.The narrative is radiant and intimate. A transcendent sequence that follows - like those moments in her songs when poetic incantation takes flight - displays her eccentric writing style not as a tic but a superpower. She sang herself into being. She's written - is still writing - her own story ― Guardian

Just Kids is the memoir we've name-checked as a favourite read for the last 15 years, but just wait until you've sunk your teeth into Patti Smith's latest Bread of Angels. From her postwar childhood to becoming a rock icon and poet, she reflects on art, love and resilience in her most intimate memoir to date ― Elle

Her greatest creation - the idea of what an artist should be - will live on for decades yet ― The Times

In her lyrical, moving memoir Bread of Angels rock goddess Patti Smith tells the story of how she 'found her voice' - both the singing and writing kind ― Independent

A fantastic read - a portrait of an artist who was at the heart of New York's counter-cultural scene in the 1970s. a warm and thoughtful person, with an intense aesthetic sensibility and a - just as intense - love of family. Her losses have shaped her. Her poetic artistry has shaped us all ― BBC

About the Author

Patti Smith is a writer, performer and visual artist. She gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary merging of poetry and rock. She has recorded thirteen albums, launched by the seminal Horses in 1975. Smith had her first exhibit of drawings at the Gotham Book Mart in 1973 and has been represented by the Robert Miller Gallery since 1978. Her many books include Witt, Babel, Woolgathering, The Coral Sea, M Train, Year of the Monkey and Just Kids, which won the National Book Award in 2010. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Smith lives in New York City.