Run Towards the Danger by Sarah Polley
I didn’t want to read Sarah Polley’s new memoir. I’m a fan, you see. In fact, we grew up together: she in exotic Avonlea and I in boring old Saskatoon. While she wore fetching pinafores, I tried and failed at fitting in with the cool kids, relegated to eating my lunch alone, locked in a bathroom stall, devouring a ham sandwich on white and rereading Anne of Green Gables for the eight(eenth) time.
Alright, this might be an exaggeration. What isn’t is the excitement that fluttered in my guts as the theme song to Road to Avonlea chimed from our television each Sunday evening. My mother and I watched religiously, rolling our eyes at Felicity’s arrogance, crushing over Gus Pike (in retrospect, that was probably just me.) Each episode was an escape, a wholesome break from a harsh and unforgiving adolescence. And Sarah Polley was part of that.
What you need to know is Sarah and I are the same age. Heck, we might as well be sisters (or at least third cousins.) I identified with her, is what I mean. She had what I wanted, what I wished for. And I wasn’t prepared for her to fuck it up with some demystifying memoir of what life was “really” like for her on set and elsewhere. So, I resisted. Until that alluring green book jacket got the best of me.
Sarah Polley has led an exceptional life. Her time as a child actor provided her with opportunities to meet influential people within the Canadian film industry, and has, undoubtedly, afforded her the luxury to create acclaimed pieces of cinematic art as an adult (okay, her talent might have had something to do with it, too.) She has brought Canadian literature to the big screen in fresh and sophisticated ways, created award winning documentaries, and the list goes on. I’m still a fan. What I didn’t know, what I hadn’t considered when I dreamt of being Sarah Polley, was that a world comprised entirely of influential and domineering adults, with little to no parental protection, is just as isolating and scary for a little girl as trying to fit in at school—alright … probably more so. Throw in a quasi-incestuous, semi-pedophiliac father, a brush with a sexual predator, etcetera, and you have a pretty compelling memoir.
This memoir is candid without being solacious and honest without being self-indulgent. Structured as a series of essays, the book moves through Polley’s life from being a child actor, to the death of her mother, to leaving home as a teenager, to becoming an activist, to becoming a mother herself. Run Towards the Danger is strangely inviting. Polley welcomes the reader into her life in a non-exhibitionist sort of way and keeps your attention. I read this book in two days, constantly drawn to Polley’s storytelling voice, eager to spend more time with her. The book reads like a conversation between friends (well, I mean, we are sisters, remember?) and while she didn’t mince words about what showbusiness (even Canadian showbusiness) does to a kid, she didn’t burst my nostalgic bubble. Rather, she impressed me even more.
Run Towards the Danger: Confrontations with a Body of Memory by Sarah Polley Hamish Hamilton Canada, pp. 259 ISBN: 9780735242883