Rock & Roll Hall of Famer Patti Smith has been lauded as the grandmother of punk, but no trace of anachronism can cling to the singer/author/lyricist who gave us Horses and Babel. In this raw, tender memoir, she retrieves prose snapshots of her relationship with "the artist of my life," Robert Mapplethorpe. In the late sixties, when the two became lovers, roommates, and fellow pranksters, neither was famous. With fondness and a keen sense of observation, Smith recalls their overlapping lives and lifelong mutual affection. In hardcover, Just Kids earned praise even from self-admitted skeptics; in paperback, it should win even more friends.