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Description
'Smith's eye for life's everyday transcendence rarely fails her' Sunday Times, 'Books of the Year'
'A triumph' Joseph O'Connor, Irish Times, 'Books of the Year'
'Quietly sacred, utterly beautiful' Service95
'Smith has already issued a handful of memoirs over the decades. Bread of Angels feels like the big one' Times Literary Supplement
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.
Product details
| Published | 15 Sep 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Paperback |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 288 |
| ISBN | 9781408867747 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Publishing |
| Dimensions | 198 x 129 mm |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
About the contributors
Reviews
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Patti Smith's Bread of Angels is a triumph
Joseph O'Connor, Irish Times, Books of the Year
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Smith's eye for life's everyday transcendence rarely fails her
Sunday Times, Books of the Year
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Quietly sacred, utterly beautiful
Service 95
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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
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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
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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
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