On Patti Smith’s “Compelling” Memoir, M Train

“She has said that she learned to write during the years she spent at home raising her children, working at it every day and publishing nothing. That long apprenticeship has paid off; M Train is certainly literature rather than a celebrity memoir. There is no conventional storyline, but the narrative is subtly controlled and compelling. Motifs bubble up – the detective shows, objects getting lost, dreams, a black coat – then disappear and resurface, to mesmerising effect.”

Alice O’Keeffe, The Guardian