Bread of Angels: A Memoir
Mesmerizing ... Her extraordinary artist’s eye and soulful nature emerged at an age when the rest of us were still content to simply play in our sandboxes ... Losses haunt the memoir; she grapples with them by returning to the stage with a fierce new hunger.
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If Bread of Angels lacks the strong coming-to-New York plot line of Just Kids, it feels more intimate than either of its predecessors, which are both graced and obscured by Smith’s enigmatic writing style ... [A] greater degree of openness ... Isn’t perfect. There’s a structural awkwardness about the way Smith has to leapfrog over those early New York years...lest she repeat herself. But those of us who love Smith — and we are legion — don’t love her because she or her art is perfect. We love her because of her aura of rough authenticity, her earnestness, her seer’s way with words and her occasional snarl.
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Embedded in the new text are enlightening, full-bodied treatments of her girlhood ... As she describes it with prosaic eloquence, her decade tantamount to exile was a critical period of transition for her as an artist ... The book sounds like her songs: spiky, intuitive, more than a little showoffy. The rest of the book is more relaxed, more reflective. As smart and vivid as Just Kids, it’s more mature: just older.
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