"A Tree Grows in Brooklyn wasn’t a new book when my mother was young. It’s still luminous, the story of Francie Nolan struggling up in a tenement slum through the cracks in the pavement to reach the sun. It may be the best book I’ve ever read about poverty, parenthood, the immigrant experience, and just about everything else. My firstborn daughter is named Francie Nolan."

"I think that Eraserhead by David Lynch. That’s a movie that I actually had to watch for Blackcoat’s Daughter. It’s one of [director] Oz [Perkins]‘ favorite movies. I was sick when I watched it the first time, but I’ve never seen anything that kind of like stuck with me and disturbed me in a cooler, more powerful way. I really, really enjoy that movie."

"Anne’s frank, witty memoir of her incredible life within the nexus of British aristocracy—born the daughter of an earl, she was lady-in-waiting to Princess Margaret and married to one of the most colorful eccentrics of the 20th century, Colin Tennant, the man who bought a barren rock in the Caribbean and turned it into the fabled jet-set paradise of Mustique."