Elves And Other Magic in the Universe--#BreadofAngels reviewed, #PattiSmith #amreading
- Janet Mason
- Mar 27
- 3 min read
I just finished reading Bread of Angels, the new memoir by Patti Smith, and am posting a mini-review below (recorded for Book Tube). The text of the review is below that. I thoroughly loved the book and hope you enjoy the review!
Bread of Angels, the new memoir by Patti Smith, reads like an epic poem that begins in her childhood, where she begins, “Laying down my pen, I find myself humming a melody of long ago, a song of the swampy woodland where I once lingered beneath fast-moving clouds, beguiled by everything.”
In her formative childhood, she meets magical trees, befriends animals, and listens to voices: “God whispers through a crease in the wallpaper, a drop of water bursting as an equation.”
She learned about life and death, revered books, and discovered who she was: “This is why I am here, I reasoned. To break through walls, through ribbons. This is who I am, I whispered, I am you.”
Patti was a sickly child but determined. One of her role models was from the book Little Women: “One thing I was certain of, I would prevail. I would be like Jo March, who drew from the fever of her imagination to tell stories.”
The oldest sibling and the commander of child armies composed of siblings and friends, Patti describes her young self as “outside the mold” and unconcerned with gender: “I didn’t want to be a boy any more than a young lady.” Later, in the book, she writes that she wanted the choices that boys had.
In the next section of the memoir, Smith comes of age as she pursues her dreams and becomes a successful musician. She writes about the work she does with other musicians and the bonds she forged. However, this hectic lifestyle of touring and becoming an icon to a younger generation left little, if any, time for the solitude required for writing. She writes of feeling that she was on the verge of losing herself and of her decision to quit the business:
“Walking away was my second declaration of existence.” She moves to Detroit, which she describes as magical, complete with a canal, to be with her partner, Fred Smith, and to be a full-time wife and mother. She also describes her losses—her parents, her brother, her close friends lost to the struggle with Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS), and ultimately her partner Fred—as shaping her.
She pulls her identity together with the magical world, the moon and stars, the monks and sherpas of Tibet, “turning prayer wheels above the world.” But perhaps it can all be summed up in her childhood realization that everything is a poem.
Reading Bread of Angels, the new memoir by Patti Smith (Random House; 2025), I am drawn back to my own life, particularly my childhood, and am reminded of the magic in the world and in the universe.
This is Janet Mason with reviews for Book Tube, Spotify, and other podcasts.
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