I’ve loved Patti Smiths other books. This one fell flat for me. I can’t exactly say why maybe it was the topic or maybe the contemporary nature but her writing style is the same and the only reason I enjoyed it the little that I did.

Patti Smith's JUST KIDS is one of my favorite memoirs of all time, but her other books I've read, M TRAIN and YEAR OF THE MONKEY, fall into a completely different category. There are moments of beautiful personal writing that feel very JUST KIDS but there are also all of these dream-like sequences, tons of references to artists and art that I am unfamiliar with, passages that go completely over my head. But the journey of reading Smith is just that, a journey. A little circuitous, a little lost, but all the same beautiful and absorbing and inspiring. If you can wade through, you'll love where you end up.