"I had heard about this book for many years before I read it. Ostensibly it is the autobiography of a former alcoholic who chronicles his struggles living rough on the streets of London in a vivid and unique style, but it is more than that. It is the story of determination and rebirth, the tale of a chess champion who overcomes a savage childhood to live again. A powerful book indeed."

"This destroyed me. It’s about examining the choices in Levy’s life that lead her to a particular event documented in the book, but at the same time the book has a lot of joy in it. Many of female writers that I admire at the moment have that same stripped back, modernist style—a kind of reportage. It’s also liberating to write about something that awful in such bare, stark terms."

"[Brackett] was my teacher. I imitated her, of course. She had those beautiful short stories in Planet Stories about John Stark, they were all Edgar Rice Burroughs par excellence. In other words, she could write better than Burroughs. She took the same sort of things he did: the fighting man of Mars, the gods of Mars, the Martian stories, but gave them that extra ambiance, style, and imagination."