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Reviews tagging 'Incest'
Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory by Sarah Polley
1 review
brogan7's review
challenging
dark
emotional
inspiring
reflective
fast-paced
5.0
This book will displace your need for sleep...it will clear breakfast lunch and supper...make no other priorities for the day, this book goes over and above them all.
I don't know if it's for everyone, I make no claims about that. Only that if it calls to you, respond to it, you won't be disappointed.
I read it because it's by Sarah Polley, of course, and her films Away from her and Stories we Tell had her on my radar from years ago. But mostly I was interested in the premise of the title essay: she is diagnosed with a concussion and, conflicting medical advice to the side, she ends up having recommended to her that she does the opposite of what our common assumptions about concussions are: don't push too hard, be careful, stop when it gets difficult. Instead she learns, literally, to run towards the danger, to challenge her brain to readapt to levels of activity and stimulation that were previously normal to her, to push, and then push past, what feels comfortable.
The thing about Sarah Polley is that she writes so compellingly, whether about being a child star or complications of pregnancy and childbirth. She writes in and of the body, she tells uncomfortable stories and doesn't shrink back from the shittiest parts of them. Not that one wants an "indomitable spirit", I mean aren't those the words that come before and after all manner of misery, and that's not how it is with Polley...you don't get the sense that she had a shitty life, and thrived in spite of it...you get the sense that she is a lover of life, that it throws her curveballs as it does to all of us, and that she is always intensely playing the game.
I don't know if it's for everyone, I make no claims about that. Only that if it calls to you, respond to it, you won't be disappointed.
I read it because it's by Sarah Polley, of course, and her films Away from her and Stories we Tell had her on my radar from years ago. But mostly I was interested in the premise of the title essay: she is diagnosed with a concussion and, conflicting medical advice to the side, she ends up having recommended to her that she does the opposite of what our common assumptions about concussions are: don't push too hard, be careful, stop when it gets difficult. Instead she learns, literally, to run towards the danger, to challenge her brain to readapt to levels of activity and stimulation that were previously normal to her, to push, and then push past, what feels comfortable.
The thing about Sarah Polley is that she writes so compellingly, whether about being a child star or complications of pregnancy and childbirth. She writes in and of the body, she tells uncomfortable stories and doesn't shrink back from the shittiest parts of them. Not that one wants an "indomitable spirit", I mean aren't those the words that come before and after all manner of misery, and that's not how it is with Polley...you don't get the sense that she had a shitty life, and thrived in spite of it...you get the sense that she is a lover of life, that it throws her curveballs as it does to all of us, and that she is always intensely playing the game.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Sexual assault
Moderate: Death of parent and Incest
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