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Considered a national treasure in her native Canada, Sarah Polley is one of the most celebrated and admired actors/directors/producers in Hollywood. Yet, as this revealing collection of six essays proves, her life is rather unknown to many, even her biggest fans. In Run Towards The Danger (taken from the advice she was given by a doctor when she was struggling with the effects of severe concussion) Polley shares the misfortunes that she and her body have endured, sometimes at the hands of others.
Going back and forth in time, each essay discusses trauma – from her stage fright, high-risk pregnancy and scoliosis – but perhaps the most impactful is her encounter with Jian Ghomeshi and her exploration of sexual assault. Don’t be put off if that all sounds too depressing, Polley’s writing is wonderful and insightful – just what you expect from such a talented figure.
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Reviewed by Julie VuongJulie Vuong is a journalist working at the centre of UK publishing, serving as feature writer at news service, BookBrunch, and columnist for Mslexia, the iconic magazine for women…
More reviews by Julie Vuong About Run Towards The Danger
Sarah Polley's work as an actor, screenwriter and director is celebrated for its honesty, complexity and deep humanity. She brings all those qualities, along with her exquisite storytelling skills, to these six essays. Each one captures a piece of Polley's life as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory and the embodied reactions of children and women adapting and surviving.
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Run Towards The Danger Synopsis
Sarah Polley's work as an actor, screenwriter and director is celebrated for its honesty, complexity and deep humanity. She brings all those qualities, along with her exquisite storytelling skills, to these six essays. Each one captures a piece of Polley's life as she remembers it, while at the same time examining the fallibility of memory and the embodied reactions of children and women adapting and surviving.
The guiding light is the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person she is now but was not then.
In this extraordinary book, Polley explores what it is to live in one's body, in a constant state of becoming, learning and changing. As she was advised after a catastrophic head injury - if we relinquish our protective crouch and run towards the danger, then life can be reset, reshaped and lived afresh.
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Sarah Polley Press Reviews
'[Polley is] a stunningly sophisticated observer of the world and an imperfect witness to the truth.' - New York Times
'Fascinating, harrowing, courageous, and deeply felt, these explorations of dangerous stories , harmful past events and trials of the soul speak to all who've encountered dark waters and have had to navigate them.' - Margaret Atwood
'This is a visceral and incisive collection of six propulsive personal essays that address the exploitation of child actors, the slippery nature of memory, sexual assault, high-risk pregnancy and premature birth, grief, motherhood, and Polley's three-year recovery from ... concussion.' - Vanity Fair
'These brilliant essays (and Sarah Polley, with her melioristic heart and empathic eye) urge us, by example, towards the examined life, the life worth living, and give us a jolt of energy to muster the courage and compassion needed to live it.' - Miriam Toews, author of Women Talking
'Sarah Polley understands that questions of conscience are inseparable from the terrors and tenderness of the body, and that courage - moral or physical - is not fearlessness but our relationship to fear. How we confront pain, how we determine what is safe, how we comprehend the depth and limits of our responsibility to others and to ourselves - these are exacting, keening questions. This is a powerful and moving book, both in its seeking and its wisdom.' - Anne Michaels, author of Fugitive Pieces and The Winter Vault
About Sarah Polley
Sarah Polley is an Academy Award-nominated screenwriter, director and actor. After making short films, Polley made her feature-length directorial debut with the drama film Away from Her in 2006. She received an Oscar nomination for the screenplay, which she’d adapted from the Alice Munro story ‘The Bear Came Over the Mountain’. As a child she starred in the long-running children’s series Road to Avonlea and in Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
Photo Credit: Luc Montpellier
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