hilarytea's review

4.0
challenging emotional hopeful informative inspiring medium-paced

o_ambrogio's review

5.0
challenging dark emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective tense fast-paced
emotional reflective medium-paced
joy_s's profile picture

joy_s's review

4.25
challenging dark emotional hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced

My copy is now full of sticky notes, underlines, and personal notes.
Sarah Polley was a celebrity figure of sorts in my childhood and carried over into my adulthood as I discovered her adult work in film and tv. I didn’t know what to expect from this, but in the first place it reaffirmed my admiration of her and her work and my love of memoirs and personal essays. I may not be a figure in the world, but this sort of thing is inspiring me to finally create some of my own essays and works to think through and re-assess my own life.
I was challenged and taught, and I pushed myself through one essay in particular that deals with medical content I tend to avoid. But through reading it I allowed myself to be emotional and still found a lot worth marking in the pages.
Yes, there is a strong mark of privilege throughout the book, but it does not go unacknowledged. After all, if you know anything about Sarah Polley and her work you can instantly assume this white, cis, film and tv creator/artist/actor etc. had and has created connections to powerful and famous people. Regardless, this work to me is still worth reading. The tone and style are brilliant and I ate this up.

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menschenliebe's review

4.0
challenging informative reflective medium-paced

Although most of the experiences described in these pages are not new to me, I felt like the detail and care given to explaining them allowed me to explore them more deeply.
teerah's profile picture

teerah's review

3.75
emotional informative reflective medium-paced

smemmott's review

4.5
challenging emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced
dhartzler's profile picture

dhartzler's review

5.0
challenging emotional funny hopeful inspiring reflective fast-paced
emotional hopeful inspiring reflective medium-paced

pay10new10's review

2.0

I had high hopes for this book and I’ve wanted to read it for quite some time but was very disappointed. The description of the book itself was very misleading. Most of the book actually discussed her experience in the performance (acting/theatre) industry which felt irrelevant. I was intrigued by the concussion portion of the book thinking it played a larger role and it felt like the shortest part even though it was presented in the description as the main focus. It sometimes also felt privileged and political - not what I was looking for.