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(FILES) In this July 25, 2015 file photo, US singer and songwriter Patti Smith performs during the 40th Paleo Festival Nyon in Nyon, the biggest open-air festival in Switzerland and one of Europe's major musical events. Revered for her influence on punk rock, Patti Smith proved herself to be a literary heavyweight as well with her 2010 memoir, "Just Kids," which won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. Smith delves further into her literary persona in a follow-up book, "M Train," a meditation on memory, loss and her worldwide quest for a perfect cup of coffee. In "M Train," which comes out October 6, 2015, Smith reflects on her life's other great, late love, rocker Fred "Sonic" Smith of the band MC5, for whom Patti Smith relocated to Detroit after they married in 1980. She returned to New York with their two children after he died in 1994. AFP PHOTO / FABRICE COFFRINI / FILES Image Credit: AFP

Punk rocker Patti Smith added “literary sensation” to her resume with the 2010 publication of her captivating memoir, Just Kids. That book simply and beautifully described her life with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe beginning in the late 1960s, long before they found fame, as they scrounged for food and art supplies, holed up in New York’s Chelsea Hotel and revelled in the city’s downtown club and arts scene, encountering celebrities wherever they went.

Fans hoping for Volume II of the story of Smith’s life with her new book, M Train, will be sorely disappointed. “It’s not so easy writing about nothing,” is the first line of M Train, a line that unfortunately proves true.

At best, M Train is filled with memory fragments and poetic descriptions. At worst, it’s 250 pages of free association and mundane drivel. There are descriptions of her junk mail, her dreams and her repeated visits to a coffee shop. But there is nothing resembling a story.

Even readers who weren’t fans of Smith’s music were drawn into Just Kids by its strong autobiographical narrative and brilliant evocation of an era in New York City when subcultures flourished amid urban decay and old-school neighbourhoods. But it’s not just the lack of a chronologically ordered story or historical context that’s missing in M Train. This book just feels like the journal jottings of a bored goddess, meandering aimlessly as Smith flies to visit a writer’s grave or give a talk somewhere, without ever offering a coherent theme, never mind a plot.

Occasionally Smith begins to veer into a semblance of a narrative, with memories of her late husband, Fred, or the story of her purchase of a house in New York’s hipster Rockaway Beach neighbourhood shortly before the area is devastated by Hurricane Sandy. But those incipient tales merely tease the reader into thinking a full-blown story is on its way. It’s not.

Still, there’s hope if you’re looking for more of what Smith gave us in her first book. Skip M Train and stay tuned for a forthcoming Showtime series based on Just Kids.