Tilda Swinton to publish typically unconventional new memoir

The book, set to be released by Farrar, Straus and Giroux next year, is described by Swinton as “a book about curiosity.” In the statement on the publisher’s Instagram, Swinton enigmatically promises, “A trail of breadcrumbs through the forest. And an essay in wonder: I hope that by the time it closes, its reader might feel affirmed and recharged with energy to value the difference between that elusive spirit that we each, uniquely, constitute, which changes constantly–evolving and developing–and that solid matter which stays the same in its essence–and consistently repays and feeds us, the world around us and all the things in it that make up our singular lives.”

If anyone can transport us through the power of expression, it’s Swinton, with the publisher explaining (only slightly less poetically), “Material Evidence refuses the shape of a conventional life story, in favor of something closer to how memory actually works: associative, sensory, anchored in things. Rather than moving chronologically from childhood to the present, the book proceeds object by object: a christening dress, a letter, a wooden leg, a sweatshirt, a length of embroidery silk, a photograph.”

With the absurdly accomplished Swinton having held audiences in rapt wonder playing everything from an archangel to a lovesick sentient octopus over the years, her memoir will no doubt offer up a typically compelling and rewarding glimpse into the mind of an artist who once held an entire museum spellbound just by taking naps.