About
the Book:
Run Towards the Danger is a collection of six essays by
Oscar-nominated screenwriter, director, and actor Sarah Polley
that explore memory and the dialogue between her past and 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
in the book's introduction
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
towards 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.
What people say:
"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
"From
the outside, Polley seemed like that rare thing—a child actor who
made the impossible leap to mature artistry. The lived reality proved
to be another story. Now Polley has published Run Towards the Danger,
a roving, psychologically probing memoir in essays ... On the page,
Polley turns out to be as brave, funny, and unself-serious as she is
on the screen." — The
New Yorker
"An
episodic memoir of life as an actor, director and human being unlike
any I have ever read: it deals with childhood bereavement, extreme
stage fright, crises of pregnancy, and abuse within the entertainment
industry ... bruisingly intelligent and candid."
— The Guardian
"Meaty ... the book is most
interesting when Polley interrogates her own contradictions and
manipulative instincts, many of which were a matter of survival ...
The little girl who carried the weight of Hollywood movie budgets and
theater actors' salaries on her shoulders is now a grown woman whose
stolen childhood has made her at once a stunningly sophisticated
observer of the world and an imperfect witness to the truth. Her
willingness to embrace such paradoxes, in this book as well as in her
films, is the mark of a real artist." — The New York
Times Book Review
About the Author:
Sarah Polley is a Canadian
actor, director, and Academy Award-nominated screenwriter. After
making short films, Polley made her feature-length directorial debut
with the drama film Away from Her in 2006. Polley received an Oscar
nomination for the screenplay, which she adapted from the Alice Munro
story "The Bear Came Over the Mountain." Her other projects
include the documentary film Stories We Tell, which won the New York
Film Critics Circle prize and the National Board of Review award for
best documentary; the miniseries adaptation of Margaret Atwood's
novel Alias Grace; and the romantic comedy Take This Waltz. Polley
began her acting career as a child, starring in many productions for
film and television.