Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory

‘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

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.

‘[Polley is] a stunningly sophisticated observer of the world and an imperfect witness to the truth.’ New York Times