An eloquent, humane book that celebrates the power of literature to bring consolation and healing: words can be medicine for the soul.

Nicci Gerrard, journalist and author of What Dementia Tell Us About Love

Reading changes lives, as I know from first-hand experience when I turned to poetry for consolation at the height of my own depressive episodes. But how exactly does it heal us? And why? The Literary Lifeline provides astute and eloquent answers. Word-lovers everywhere will be pressing this book into one another's hands. Oh, and phew, given the subject matter: it's beautifully written too.

Rachel Kelly, writer and author of Sunday Times bestseller 'Black Rainbow: How Words Healed Me, My Journey through Depression'

The Literary Lifeline is the book about reading and wellbeing that you did not know you needed. It considers reading groups, public libraries, poetry and dementia, medicine as story-telling, and writing through grief. It is both personal and scholarly, passionate and self-deprecating, tragic and humorous. Most importantly, it made me experience afresh the phenomenon that it is about: 'the transformative potential of reading'.

Elena Semino, Professor of Linguistics and Verbal Art, Lancaster University, UK