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acolly 's review for:
Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory
by Sarah Polley
This book is very important to me. I wrote a lot of notes and I read every single word; the endnotes and acknowledgements included.
I didn’t much like the first chapter “Alice, Collapsing” where Polley details her inclusion as a child in a Stratford production of Alice in Wonderland. The scene where she describes being pulled aside to be told she was adding an extra vowel at the end of every word was just too….wtf. Very hard to imagine. Confusing. And seemed a bit unrealistic or over the top? I did like the character development of her Auntie Anne. She came across as witty and hilarious.
I have always strongly disliked the story of Alice in Wonderland, so reading an entire chapter about a story I detest was just ennuyant. The background information about Lewis Caroll being a total pedophile was like, yeah…duh. Were we supposed to correlate Caroll with Polley's dad? He kept making inappropriate comments…I guess her relationship with him was fraught.
The essay “The Woman Who Stayed Silent” was one of my favourites. It was so well written. So many excellently articulated lines that drove home the realities of victims of assault. So many different perspectives were addressed. The simplicity of some lines was really powerful regarding how and why victims may behave in certain ways after an assault.
The essay “High Risk” was really difficult to relate to but had one of the most gut-wrenching lines. When describing the day before her mother died Polley notes giving her mother an amethyst necklace and telling her it would heal her and that she would be fine. She writes, “Later, I realized that if she could hear me that morning, she heard an eleven-year-old who didn’t know her mother was going to die, who didn’t know how to say goodbye or even that she should”. I cried.
In the essay “Mad Genius” Polley expertly lays out the complications of memory and trauma. “So much of coming to terms with hard things from the past seems to be about believing our own accounts, having our memories confirmed by those who were there and honoured by those who weren’t”. Incredibly succinct and accurate.
Reading the essay “Dissolving the Boundaries” (I mean, the entire book really), was a complete game changer for me in terms of how I think of child actors. It is entirely inappropriate! As a society, we don’t believe children should work. That should be the full stop. But it just isn’t so. Polley details being a child actor and meeting terminally ill children whose wish it was to meet her. That seems like emotional abuse.
The essay “Run Towards the Danger” where Polley details her symptoms from a concussion accident was another game changer for me. Polley sprinkles humour throughout this essay but it was so sad to read because truths are hidden when it comes to invisible symptoms or injuries.
I will read or consume anything Polley puts out in the future.
I didn’t much like the first chapter “Alice, Collapsing” where Polley details her inclusion as a child in a Stratford production of Alice in Wonderland. The scene where she describes being pulled aside to be told she was adding an extra vowel at the end of every word was just too….wtf. Very hard to imagine. Confusing. And seemed a bit unrealistic or over the top? I did like the character development of her Auntie Anne. She came across as witty and hilarious.
I have always strongly disliked the story of Alice in Wonderland, so reading an entire chapter about a story I detest was just ennuyant. The background information about Lewis Caroll being a total pedophile was like, yeah…duh. Were we supposed to correlate Caroll with Polley's dad? He kept making inappropriate comments…I guess her relationship with him was fraught.
The essay “The Woman Who Stayed Silent” was one of my favourites. It was so well written. So many excellently articulated lines that drove home the realities of victims of assault. So many different perspectives were addressed. The simplicity of some lines was really powerful regarding how and why victims may behave in certain ways after an assault.
The essay “High Risk” was really difficult to relate to but had one of the most gut-wrenching lines. When describing the day before her mother died Polley notes giving her mother an amethyst necklace and telling her it would heal her and that she would be fine. She writes, “Later, I realized that if she could hear me that morning, she heard an eleven-year-old who didn’t know her mother was going to die, who didn’t know how to say goodbye or even that she should”. I cried.
In the essay “Mad Genius” Polley expertly lays out the complications of memory and trauma. “So much of coming to terms with hard things from the past seems to be about believing our own accounts, having our memories confirmed by those who were there and honoured by those who weren’t”. Incredibly succinct and accurate.
Reading the essay “Dissolving the Boundaries” (I mean, the entire book really), was a complete game changer for me in terms of how I think of child actors. It is entirely inappropriate! As a society, we don’t believe children should work. That should be the full stop. But it just isn’t so. Polley details being a child actor and meeting terminally ill children whose wish it was to meet her. That seems like emotional abuse.
The essay “Run Towards the Danger” where Polley details her symptoms from a concussion accident was another game changer for me. Polley sprinkles humour throughout this essay but it was so sad to read because truths are hidden when it comes to invisible symptoms or injuries.
I will read or consume anything Polley puts out in the future.