"If you think you aren’t a big fan of Springsteen, let this be your gateway drug. It was for me. The record consists of 8-track demos for what was to be the record. They recorded the record with the full band and then decided that there was something special to the demos and put them out instead. Amazingly the full band recording has still never been released. The record as it stands though is a stark and darkly haunting collection of masterfully told stories of life and death and ill-fated love."

"I really love the enigmatic, haunting approach of this film—how it presents this all-girls boarding school, repressed and rife with secret undercurrents of sexual longing, that then ruptures upon colliding with the mysterious and raw natural world. It’s such a fascinating film to puzzle over, and I find it inspiring how the writer of the original novel, Joan Lindsay, by not providing a solution to the mystery and instead allowing the mystery itself to be the focus, upended narrative expectations and created something so beguiling and unforgettable."

"I love this book because it is a haunting, touching, and beautifully written story about a deeply flawed family. I also love it because it was put into my hands more than 20 years ago by a young woman who said to me: ‘You must read this book.’ Did I ask that young woman to marry me because of McFarland’s book? That might be overstating things. But sometimes when someone changes your life by handing you a great book, she might be there to change your life in other ways as well."