Listen free for 30 days
-
Run Towards the Danger
- Confrontations with a Body of Memory
- Narrated by: Sarah Polley
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
Failed to add items
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wish list failed.
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed
Buy Now for $32.63
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Publisher's Summary
#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER * WINNER OF THE 2022 TORONTO BOOK AWARDS * SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 KOBO EMERGING WRITER PRIZE * NOMINATED FOR THE 2023 HERITAGE TORONTO AWARDS * A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice * Named a Most-Anticipated Book of 2022 by Entertainment Weekly, Lit Hub, and AV Club
“A visceral and incisive collection of six propulsive personal essays.” —Vanity Fair
“[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
From the Academy Award-nominated director of Women Talking, Run Towards the Danger explores memory and the dialogue between her past and her 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’s work as an actor, screenwriter, and director is celebrated for its honesty, complexity, and deep humanity. She brings all of 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 you are now but were 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.
In this extraordinary book, Sarah Polley explores what it is to live in one’s body, in a constant state of becoming, learning, and changing.
You may also enjoy...
-
Rememberings
- Written by: Sinéad O'Connor
- Narrated by: Sinéad O'Connor
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the acclaimed, controversial singer-songwriter Sinéad O’Connor comes a revelatory memoir of her fraught childhood, musical triumphs, fearless activism, and of the enduring power of song.
-
-
A Great Read!
- By Amazon Customer on 2021-06-09
Written by: Sinéad O'Connor
-
Fayne
- A Novel
- Written by: Ann-Marie MacDonald
- Narrated by: Ann-Marie MacDonald
- Length: 30 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the late nineteenth century, Charlotte Bell is growing up at Fayne, a vast and lonely estate straddling the border between England and Scotland, where she has been kept from the world by her adoring father, Lord Henry Bell, owing to a mysterious condition. Charlotte, strong and insatiably curious, revels in the moorlands, and has learned the treacherous and healing ways of the bog from the old hired man, Byrn, whose own origins are shrouded in mystery.
-
-
So rich in detail!
- By samONT on 2022-10-28
Written by: Ann-Marie MacDonald
-
What My Bones Know
- A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
- Written by: Stephanie Foo
- Narrated by: Stephanie Foo
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.
-
-
This book should come with a trigger warning
- By Martie on 2023-02-01
Written by: Stephanie Foo
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- Written by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Brilliant narration of beautifully written story
- By Kareem on 2023-05-28
Written by: Barbara Kingsolver
-
You Could Make This Place Beautiful
- A Memoir
- Written by: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes.
-
-
Highly recommend
- By Amazon Customer on 2023-05-17
Written by: Maggie Smith
-
Unreconciled
- Family, Truth, and Indigenous Resistance
- Written by: Jesse Wente
- Narrated by: Jesse Wente
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Part memoir and part manifesto, Unreconciled is a stirring call to arms to put truth over the flawed concept of reconciliation, and to build a new, respectful relationship between the nation of Canada and Indigenous peoples.
-
-
Brilliant Must Listen/Read for all Canadians
- By Cass on 2022-02-04
Written by: Jesse Wente
-
Rememberings
- Written by: Sinéad O'Connor
- Narrated by: Sinéad O'Connor
- Length: 7 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From the acclaimed, controversial singer-songwriter Sinéad O’Connor comes a revelatory memoir of her fraught childhood, musical triumphs, fearless activism, and of the enduring power of song.
-
-
A Great Read!
- By Amazon Customer on 2021-06-09
Written by: Sinéad O'Connor
-
Fayne
- A Novel
- Written by: Ann-Marie MacDonald
- Narrated by: Ann-Marie MacDonald
- Length: 30 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the late nineteenth century, Charlotte Bell is growing up at Fayne, a vast and lonely estate straddling the border between England and Scotland, where she has been kept from the world by her adoring father, Lord Henry Bell, owing to a mysterious condition. Charlotte, strong and insatiably curious, revels in the moorlands, and has learned the treacherous and healing ways of the bog from the old hired man, Byrn, whose own origins are shrouded in mystery.
-
-
So rich in detail!
- By samONT on 2022-10-28
Written by: Ann-Marie MacDonald
-
What My Bones Know
- A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma
- Written by: Stephanie Foo
- Narrated by: Stephanie Foo
- Length: 10 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By age thirty, Stephanie Foo was successful on paper: She had her dream job as an award-winning radio producer at This American Life and a loving boyfriend. But behind her office door, she was having panic attacks and sobbing at her desk every morning. After years of questioning what was wrong with herself, she was diagnosed with complex PTSD—a condition that occurs when trauma happens continuously, over the course of years.
-
-
This book should come with a trigger warning
- By Martie on 2023-02-01
Written by: Stephanie Foo
-
Demon Copperhead
- A Novel
- Written by: Barbara Kingsolver
- Narrated by: Charlie Thurston
- Length: 21 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Set in the mountains of southern Appalachia, Demon Copperhead is the story of a boy born to a teenaged single mother in a single-wide trailer, with no assets beyond his dead father’s good looks and copper-colored hair, a caustic wit, and a fierce talent for survival. Relayed in his own unsparing voice, Demon braves the modern perils of foster care, child labor, derelict schools, athletic success, addiction, disastrous loves, and crushing losses.
-
-
Brilliant narration of beautifully written story
- By Kareem on 2023-05-28
Written by: Barbara Kingsolver
-
You Could Make This Place Beautiful
- A Memoir
- Written by: Maggie Smith
- Narrated by: Maggie Smith
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In her memoir You Could Make This Place Beautiful, poet Maggie Smith explores the disintegration of her marriage and her renewed commitment to herself in lyrical vignettes that shine, hard and clear as jewels. The book begins with one woman’s personal, particular heartbreak, but its circles widen into a reckoning with contemporary womanhood, traditional gender roles, and the power dynamics that persist even in many progressive homes.
-
-
Highly recommend
- By Amazon Customer on 2023-05-17
Written by: Maggie Smith
-
Unreconciled
- Family, Truth, and Indigenous Resistance
- Written by: Jesse Wente
- Narrated by: Jesse Wente
- Length: 6 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Part memoir and part manifesto, Unreconciled is a stirring call to arms to put truth over the flawed concept of reconciliation, and to build a new, respectful relationship between the nation of Canada and Indigenous peoples.
-
-
Brilliant Must Listen/Read for all Canadians
- By Cass on 2022-02-04
Written by: Jesse Wente
What the critics say
2023, Heritage Toronto Award: Nominated
2023, Kobo Emerging Writer Prize: Short-listed
2022, PrizeName: Toronto Book Awar: Winner
“Sarah Polley understands that questions of conscience are inseparable from the terrors and tenderness of the body, and that courage - moral or physical - is not fearlessness but our relationship to fear. How we confront pain, how we determine what is safe, how we comprehend the depth and limits of our responsibility to others and to ourselves - these are exacting, keening questions. This is a powerful and moving book, both in its seeking and its wisdom.” (Anne Michaels, Giller-shortlisted author of Fugitive Pieces and All We Saw)
“In Run Towards the Danger, Sarah Polley does just that. She tells us the truth, even when it feels razor sharp - even when it feels dangerous. She rips away at painful past experiences that she’s never shared before, and in this way emboldens us to sharpen our gaze on the shadowed moments in our own past, to understand their provenance and to bring meaning to them. She shows us how, by doing this, we can begin to move towards that specific peace of mind - you might even call it joy - that comes with confronting our demons and knowing ourselves. These brilliant essays (and Sarah Polley, with her melioristic heart and empathic eye) urge us, by example, towards the examined life, the life worth living, and give us a jolt of energy to muster the courage and compassion needed to live it.” (Miriam Toews, best-selling author of Women Talking and All My Puny Sorrows)
What listeners say about Run Towards the Danger
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- KM
- 2023-04-08
This book is incredible, emotional, moving and inspiring. I would highly recommend it!!
Sarah is an incredible storyteller. Each short story had an amazing theme and lesson throughout it. The text is so raw and honest and beautiful.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- David kift
- 2022-04-25
Great narrator
loved the narrator and an interesting perspective .
I've never thought of what a child actor or actors may have endured.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Heather Winkelman
- 2022-12-11
An engaging & illuminating story.
Sarah Polley's brave and engaging story will help light the way for others who suffer in invisible ways. She has performed an invaluable service & I am profoundly grateful for her story.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Dawn Berney
- 2023-03-20
Insight into oneself, film world and society is rare.
Sarah Polley is a supernova. Incredibly wise, generous, and talented. Absolutely fabulous book and narration.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anna MacKay-Smith
- 2023-03-14
Amazing
Loved this book. Insightful and provocative. Polley is a National Treasure as an artist and thinker.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 2023-11-21
Balancing Fragility with Grit
I could deeply relate to your first book on so many levels. I am recovering from a Sept 5/23 severe concussion, and it was heartening to know my instinct since day 3 to push my limits each day balanced with “listening to my body” might just be contributing to my speedy recovery. In fact, I realize that despite my gentle nature, I have been “running towards the danger” my whole life, as have you Sarah. Thank you for showing us the way…please keep writing!
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Caitlind
- 2022-04-02
an important read for folks working in film/TV
Sarah Polley crafted a surprising, insightful, and compulsive read. Very much a coming-of-age narrative, wrapped inside the self-examination of adulthood. An important piece to read for folks working in the film and television industry. Polley documents abuse on set and the life-altering impacts of being a child actor... but you don't need to know her career to find this read compelling. This book should attract readers interested in complex storytelling, nuanced perspectives, and a poetic femme energy - honed by years of cultural work and refined by psychoanalysis. At times, her stories were hard to listen to - but as the narrator, Polley guides you through with feeling and gentleness. Take a listen.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Kate R.
- 2022-03-05
Devastatingly honest
This book took me on an unexpected journey and I feel wiser for having listened to it.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sarah Painter
- 2022-10-25
Outstanding. Personal. Beautiful. Powerful.
This book is an extraordinary masterpiece or personal reflection, soul searching, and courageous contemplation. Masterfully assembled into a connected work of art. I am devastated that it’s over. A must-listen❤️
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Sydney Gilchrist
- 2023-04-17
Brilliant in so many ways
Beautiful, astonishing book, narrated absolutely gorgeously by the author. Had me in tears more than once. Recommended to all.
Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
You voted on this review!
You reported this review!