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Patti Smith’s memoir M Train is a delight. She drifts between dream and reality and in both revisits events of her life. With Fred, with fellow writers (dead and alive) and with cafes.

I had already tremendously enjoyed her book Just Kids and was looking forward to reading this one.

Melancholy and Beauty on the M Train

Smith’s narrative captured me. I can imagine sitting in Café ‘ino with her. Drinking black coffee, trying to perfect the art of writing about nothing.

She loves crime television, falls for a Rockaway Beach property and travels to visit her writer friends, most of them dead. Her mind works in brilliant yet strange ways and the entire book is a journey that encompasses her life in 18 stations.

The book has no plot. No Linear. Patti Smith’s musings are wonderfully strange and captivating. Upon finishing the book I felt as I had just been to Tokyo, to England, to Mexico and all of these places were full of adventure, poets, and black coffee.

Her polaroid camera is a constant companion and the images visualize the story for the reader. The legendary artist has one beautiful mind and reading M Train is a serene experience that I went through with a smile on my face.

I kind of wish I was a coffee drinker. Get the book!

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