Still the best book about being broke.

Bought this in an airport in 2019 because the flight was delayed and the alternative was a thriller with a foil title on the cover. I did not read the whole thing before boarding, whatever I told my wife, but I read enough of it to miss the first call.

What gets me is how unembarrassed it is about being poor. Two kids in New York with no money — splitting a sandwich, choosing between art materials and dinner — and Smith writes all of it without the retrospective glamour that ruins nearly every book of this type. Nobody in it knows they are going to matter, and she resists every single chance to tell them.

The Mapplethorpe material is the heart of it and she never once explains him. He is simply there, difficult and beautiful and increasingly not hers, and she declines to psychologise. Set it beside any music memoir published since and you will see what that restraint cost.

Also, she can write. Actual sentences, actual rhythm, no filler. The Chelsea Hotel chapter is worth the cover price on its own and I say that as someone who thinks most books about the Chelsea Hotel should be pulped and recycled into something useful.

The audiobook is her, and her voice does something to the last section the page can't manage. Get both if you can afford both. Ten, and I've given away five copies.