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.

What follows are scattered recollections of her life, which include childhood days spent at her grandmother’s house; school holidays playing with her siblings and pretending to dig a mine at the bottom of the garden; ballet training and an eating disorder that robs her of puberty. These snapshots, which shift in perspective and move between the second and third person, gradually build a picture of her past.

The actor Helena Bonham Carter is the narrator, bringing fresh shape and clarity to Dawson’s deliberately fractured and impressionistic prose. What emerges is an original self-portrait and a compelling exploration of memory, identity and the self.

• Available via Canongate, 7hr 29min

Further listening

The Rose Field
Philip Pullman, Penguin and David Fickling Books, 22hr 36min
Michael Sheen narrates the final instalment of the Book of Dust trilogy, in which Lyra and her daemon are given an epic farewell. Also features a bonus Q&A between Pullman and Sheen in which they discuss the legacy of the series.

With the Law on Our Side
Lady Hale, Vintage Digital, 10hr 36min
A tour of British law from the former supreme court president, featuring real stories from benefits tribunals and the family and criminal courts. Lady Hale, our narrator, finds justice being delivered amid squeezed budgets and backlogs where it can take years for cases to be heard.