Patti Smith
M Train
An extremely enjoyable read of Patti's musings on life, death, travel, books and coffee. It's a couple of years (I guess) of her life with excursions being the impetus for the musings with recurrent themes including dreams of various things especially the cowpoke cum philosopher cum pilot (as in life). The other recurrence is her love for, fond memory of and dreadful missing of here husband and obvious soulmate Fred Sonic Smith (also a pilot but of planes). It's difficult to describe the book that well as you need to read it but I'll try a bit more. A lovely introspective and meandering style takes you into Patti's life at least a brief moments in time and there's a certain comfortable repetitiveness in it whether it's feeding the cats, drinking coffee at the local cafe or waiting in hotels. All underpinned by watching detective crime episodes which I admit I've never understood. I don't like things too dark. There's a lot about authors who she's met or, yes, idolises and her visiting their graves with objects that fit with them. Yeah quite a lot is darkly nostalgic. Despite this the book is very sympathetic to the reader and comes across beautifully. It also got me into Haruki Murakami which the one story I've read I can understand why she likes him. By the end of the book there is a sense of further loss as a hurricane destroys Rockaway Beach boardwalk (I really need to visit there), her local cafes are gone and a couple of the cats pass away. Plus other things. But really this is a positive story as her new home on the beach escapes complete destruction and is renovated. Things come and go. And the new comes in.
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