All of Us Atoms by Holly Dawson audiobook review – an extraordinary self-portrait

Helena Bonham Carter narrates the playwright’s impressionistic memoir, written as she was experiencing the loss of her memory Playwright Holly Dawson’s memoir tells of memory lapses and a series of seizures that signal something isn’t right.

Before visiting a doctor, she had been muddling up words, forgetting people’s names and flooding the bathroom.

The book finds Dawson in conversation with her brain, which is both part of her and a separate entity.

“Don’t be cross with me, my love.

I am tired,” it tells her.

“Between your ears hearing a word and your mouth repeating it, I am doing all this work you don’t see.” Dawson, who is approaching 40 and a single mum of two children, later learns she has epilepsy and a brain tumour, which may or may not be benign.

A consultant explains she must wait several months to find out, and so she sets about preserving memories and words while she still has them.

“Come.

Sit.

Take your notebook … write it down,” says her brain.

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