ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF 2025 ACCORDING TO THE NEW YORKER, ARA, EL PERIÓDICO, TELVA, AND ELDIARIO.ES
The radiant definitive memoirs of one of the greatest icons of our time, winner of the National Book Award: a tribute to creation, love, and hope
On the bestseller lists of The New York Times, LA Times, USA Today, and independent bookstores
“Patti Smith is an intergenerational goddess.”
Montserrat Domínguez
“God whispers through a wrinkle in the wallpaper,” writes Patti Smith in these extraordinary memoirs in which, from her earliest memory to her current concerns, she weaves an unforgettable story of a life devoted to beauty, music, poetry, and love.
Born into a working-class family shortly after World War II, her Dickensian childhood unfolds amid evictions and illnesses, alternating with games and storybooks that open the doors to a world full of magic and dreams of freedom. She soon discovers in Arthur Rimbaud and Bob Dylan the models for her own poems and songs, and in New York, a new artistic territory where she forms a band and composes legendary albums like Horses and Because the Night. Love and family, loss and rebuilding, and always writing are the constants of a life journey driven by artistic freedom and the power of imagination to transform the everyday into the sacred, the ordinary into the magical, and pain into hope.
Critics have said:
“Perhaps Smith’s most intimate autobiography to date [...]. She lived a ‘cruel but magical reality,’ in which she discovered both the weight of suffering and the promise of art.”
The New Yorker (“The Best Books of 2025 So Far”)
“Smith’s voice becomes paper in these memoirs that tell the story of a life devoted from poetry and music to beauty and love.”
Babelia
“Her voice committed to the just causes of this world is heard in her texts. [ ] Her definitive memoirs.”
Leticia García, El País
“A late, wonderful no-hat-wearer who, against all odds, in a world dominated by men in rock & roll as well, made her way and fascinated everyone she met.”
Benjamín Prado, La Ventana (Cadena Ser)
“Neither victim nor winner; she presents herself as someone else, one of us. With unbreakable values toward her loved ones, her audience, her art, her ethical sense. For all this, for carving out a life consistent with herself without ever giving up, she has inspired many generations.”
Cristina Ros, elDiario.es
“An author always inspired and groundbreaking at every moment, both with the pen and with a guitar in her hands. [ ] Very current, stimulating, and, I would insist, innocent memoirs. History of the counterculture. That is, history.”
Juan Bolea, El Periódico
“Like her songs, the book has a raw, simple, and direct style, but wrapped in a poetic atmosphere that avoids grandiloquence. Narrated with sobriety but without coldness, with the utmost respect for words, memories, and the everyday. Each sentence seems carefully placed, as if the silence surrounding it were as important as what it says.”
Iñigo Beraza, El Comercio
“It unleashes a soft intensity.”
Javier Villuendas, RTVE
