"Forrester was the oldest of 8 children, in Depression-Era Liverpool. No school, no medicine, no hope - her life was exactly as mine would have been, had I not had the incredibly good fortune to be born after the introduction of the NHS and the Welfare State. I read it as a direct letter from her to me. It politicised me instantly."

"The Thin Red Line is my favorite film, and that’s probably the film that had the most impact on me as a human being. I feel like it really rescued me from a depression and gave me a lot of faith in people. I just thought it was beautiful. I saw it when I was nineteen or twenty. I’m a huge fan of Terrence Malick’s work."

"Studs Terkel was a radio host in Chicago who also wrote fantastic oral histories about 20th century America by interviewing regular people about their lives. He covered the Great Depression in Hard Times; World War II in The Good War; and, in this book, what people’s jobs mean to them. His books are invaluable time capsules of how Americans in previous generations spoke and thought about themselves."

"I genuinely grieved for Anna for days after I finished reading it. That’s what reading Tolstoy is like…the best and purest realism. I also love that a man wrote a story that so perfectly portrays the misogyny that this woman was subjected to: punished for loving another man, torn apart from her son, isolated and addicted to drugs and suffering postpartum depression. Super sad and beautiful."