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Preview
  • Run Towards the Danger

  • Conversations with a Body of Memory
  • By: Sarah Polley
  • Narrated by: Sarah Polley
  • Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
  • 4.7 out of 5 stars (15 ratings)

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Run Towards the Danger

By: Sarah Polley
Narrated by: Sarah Polley
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Summary

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
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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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Extraordinary story beautifully told & narrated

It takes a lot to keep me enthralled in a book. This is an awe-inspiring piece of work, and a life-lesson in reflection, compassion and in running towards the danger.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Thorough self investigation

I loved articulating the experience of this book with the author’s excellent film The Stories We Tell. Through her words and images, the world becomes clearer and brighter - even it’s dark places.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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Insightful

I could listen to her voice and insightful reflections all day. She studies her own life and influences with humble curiosity.

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Interesting to a point

Thought the story was interesting, well told and so funny in places that I laughed out loud with certain turns of phrase.
Harrowing as her life was I admit I started to flag near the end…I stopped being interested and longed for it to end.

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a stunning achievement

Remarkably wise, insightful and captivating. To hear Polley read her own essays aloud is the icing on the cake.

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Amazing

I loved this. Her exploration of how she has processed past trauma and how it has shaped her life is inspiring. Highly recommended.

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