BY Just Kids

so so so so good

In good condition!

Das Buch ist eine Zeitreise in das New York der 70er Jahre und lässt einen so schnell nicht mehr los. Patti Smith schreibt, mit einer Wortgewandtheit die ihres gleichen sucht. Sie erzählt langsam und dennoch hat mich die Geschichte sofort in ihren Bann gezogen. Das Buch ist einfach wunderschön und trifft mitten ins Herz. Gespickt mit unzähligen Anspielungen und geschmückt durch bildhafte Formulierungen macht es einfach nur Spaß. Es lädt wirklich zum Träumen ein.

Really beautiful and touching book, which greatly exceeded my expectations. This isn't a book about Patti Smith, or her music, nor even about Robert Mapplethorpe, though obviously there's plenty about them and their work between these covers. It's a book about their relationship as artists and lovers as an entity in its own right, and as such it's one of the finest love stories you will ever read - a mostly platonic story for sure, but no less powerful for all that. You put the book down feeling that he was surely her 'other half', and she his - that they made one another whole, as people as well as artists. The writing is never sentimental, even when it's dealing with Robert's untimely end - it's crisp and hard-edged, but never prosaic, and the more powerful for it. Her recollections of tough times in New York around the turn of the 70s and growing up in places like the Chelsea Hotel and CBGBs before they became tourist destinations are captured with an artist's clear eye and are a valuable addition in themselves to other memoirs of those times. But it's the story of Robert and Patti that rightly dominates. A very moving, life-affirming memoir, and highly recommended to anyone with even a passing interest in their work and those times.

I read through this book much too quickly and was sad it was finished so soon. Patti Smith has a very simple but extremely efficient voice that evokes just the right mood and makes you feel like you are in the room with her. What a time she live(d) in! The book is magic and hard to put down. I have to buy her latest ASAP.

Just Kids is a luminous coming-of-age memoir that reads less as a record of events and more as an invocation of a vanished world where art, hunger and love were deeply intertwined. At its center is the relationship between Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe - a bond that defies simple labels of romance or friendship, taking on an almost mythic emotional force. What elevates the memoir beyond a conventional artist’s life story is its vivid evocation of an era when art was not merely a pursuit but a necessity. New York emerges as a restless, unpredictable presence-simultaneously generous and indifferent—where chance encounters in hotel rooms, galleries and cramped apartments quietly alter the course of lives. The city’s cultural energy, from the fading echoes of Beat literature to the rise of punk, forms the backdrop against which Smith and Mapplethorpe gradually discover themselves as artists. Their early years are marked by poverty, yet deprivation is portrayed not as misery but as a force that deepens their commitment to both art and each other. Shared rooms, borrowed meals and constant uncertainty are rendered with remarkable clarity, while the artists, musicians and poets who drift through their lives reinforce the sense of a city in perpetual transformation. The memoir’s power also lies in its emotional restraint. Even in moments of separation and loss, Smith’s prose remains composed, allowing feeling to emerge through precise observation rather than sentimentality. The evolution of Patti and Robert from inseparable companions to distinct artistic figures unfolds with quiet inevitability. Ultimately, Just Kids is not only a portrait of two artists but a meditation on creativity, devotion and the sacrifices demanded by both. It leaves behind a lingering feeling, like a half-remembered song whose melody remains long after the final note has faded.

have been really excited for this one! it came in very good condition and also arrived one day earlier than the ordered said!:)) super happy with my this book:)