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Run Towards the Danger

Conversations with a Body of Memory

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Run Towards the Danger

By: Sarah Polley
Narrated by: Sarah Polley
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About this listen

Named a Most-Anticipated Book of 2022 by Entertainment Weekly, Lit Hub, and AV Club.

Oscar-nominated screenwriter, director and actor Sarah Polley's Run Towards the Danger explores memory and the dialogue between her past and her present.

These are the most dangerous stories of my life. The ones I have avoided, the ones I haven't told, the ones that have kept me awake on countless nights. As these stories found echoes in my adult life, and then went another, better way than they did in childhood, they became lighter and easier to carry.

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 chops, 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, the mutability of reality in the mind, and the possibility of experiencing the past anew, as the person she is now but was not then. As Polley writes, the past and present are in a “reciprocal pressure dance”.

Polley contemplates stories from her own life ranging from stage fright to high-risk childbirth to endangerment and more. After struggling with the aftermath of a concussion, Polley met a specialist who gave her wholly new advice: to recover from a traumatic injury, she had to retrain her mind to strength by charging toward the very activities that triggered her symptoms. With riveting clarity, she shows the power of applying that same advice to other areas of her life in order to find a path forward, a way through. Rather than live in a protective crouch, she had to run towards the danger.

In this extraordinary audiobook, Polley explores what it is to live in one's body, in a constant state of becoming, learning and changing.

©2022 Sarah Polley (P)2022 W F Howes
Artists, Architects & Photographers Essays Gender Studies Nonfiction Celebrity

Critic Reviews

"A visceral and incisive collection of six propulsive personal essays." (Vanity Fair)

What listeners say about Run Towards the Danger

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Absolute work of Art

This book brilliantly brings together the analytical power of its author, the romanticism, humour, activism, skilful writing and storytelling that intersect in Sarah Polley. Her capacity to hold a world of marvel, pain, anger, injustice, despair, strength, sheer joy, absolute brilliance and above all, hope, is breathtaking. I was touched deeply by each essay and by the kindness in her voice and her vision of the world. It is like reading fiction and non fiction simultaneously.
A life changing experience.

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Brilliant

Brilliant story and narration. Insightful and empathetic and courageous essays from a remarkable woman. Will be one of my favourite books of the year!

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Stunning!!

Run towards the danger is utterly brilliant. My PhD is in literature and I sometimes feel disappointed by writing, but this book is astonishingly good and because Sarah narrates it herself with her glorious acting skills, it’s simply stellar and I cannot recommend more highly. The content also is so carefully thought out, so politically brilliant and so personally poignant. I absolutely loved it.

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Not for me

Bought this audiobook because of the high reviews. I was disappointed, maybe I was expecting great.

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