"On Christmas of 1994, I was fifteen and had just come out to my family. I was also an aspiring writer who adored Virginia Woolf. I put Chloe Plus Olivia on my Christmas list, not expecting anyone to actually seek out an anthology of lesbian literature and buy it for me. But my dad did: he made a special trip to the University Bookstore in Seattle; he wrapped it and put it under the tree for me. I devoured the book, took it to college with me years later, then moved into my first apartment with it when I was twenty. It’s long gone now (lost in another move), but I still remember it fondly as a formative literary text, and as a sign that my dad loved and supported me without hesitation."

"Once you put aside the matter of OH MY GOD THE SLAVERY JESUS LOOK AT ALL THE FREAKING SLAVERY STOP WITH THE SLAVERY, MAN, the core conceit of this book is amazing. It the most famous teen literature ever-Scarlett is 16 when the Civil War kicks off, and what keeps her going through the complete destruction of her family, status and life is her unrequited love for Ashley Wilkes. The idea of that kind of demented fantasy-let's face it, Ashley's a drip-keeping you going through awful years is such a key Teenage Girl Thing. The fuel is mad unrequited love, keeping you going. It inspired both the "Fantasy Love Affairs" chapter in How To Be A Woman, and most of the plot of How To Build A Girl, hahaha."

"This slim novel is one of the most intriguing works of literature I have come upon in a long while. Part mystery, part metaphysical journey, part fairy tale, part adult love story, it brought me to a state of the most welcome strangeness, similar to the one I sought out as a young reader of books that challenged how we perceive reality and reconstruct it in text. In the narrative’s mysterious, slow burn of a chase, a woman who has left her husband is tracked down in The Taiga, a territory where the laws of nature are as much out of joint as the rules of its isolated human society. In its uneasy atmosphere there are echoes from Tarkovsky's film Stalker as well as from golden age private eye novels."