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We are never closer to life than when we brush up against the possibility of death. I Am, I Am, I Am is Maggie O'Farrell's astonishing memoir of the near-death experiences that have punctuated and defined her life. The childhood illness that left her bedridden for a year, which she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. An encounter with a disturbed man on a remote path. And, most terrifying of all, an ongoing, daily struggle to protect her daughter -- for whom this book was written -- from a condition that leaves her unimaginably vulnerable to life's myriad dangers. Seventeen discrete encounters with Maggie at different ages, in different locations, reveal a whole life in a series of tense, visceral snapshots. In taut prose that vibrates with electricity and restrained emotion, O'Farrell captures the perils running just beneath the surface, and illuminates the preciousness, beauty, and mysteries of life itself.… (more)
User reviews
The one thing that really shines through here, as with all O'Farrell's books, is the quality and beauty of the writing. And in this book she uses it to tell us, the readers, of momentous times in her life. She's had some truly awful experiences, some health-related, some people-related and many a time when reading this book I was shaking my head in a kind of uncomprehending horror at what she went through.
I also marvelled at all she has achieved, despite various issues that arose out of her childhood illness.
I Am, I Am, I Am is a quite incredible read. So emotional, so intense, so moving and it's hard to credit the fact that all these things happened to one person. They say what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. I'm not sure if that's true but certainly Maggie O'Farrell seems to me to be a very strong person, a survivor. This book is just superb.
Her writing is fantastic, her story telling is captivating, and it’s such a page turner that you can read this in a short time. She has many other novels to read that I now need to look up. 4 stars
I absolutely loved this and highly recommend it.
In a nutshell: Author Maggie O’Farrell examines, with lovely prose, moments in her life that could have led to her imminent death.
Worth quoting:
“Crossing time zones in this way can bring upon you
“To be so unheard, so disregarded, so disbelieved: I was unprepared for this. I also felt helpless, blocked in.”
“When you are a child, no one tells you that you’re going to die. You have to work it out for yourself.”
Why I chose it:
I was in a bookshop connected to a museum that focuses on health, and they were having a “Three for the price of two” sale. This one looked like an interesting third book.
Review:
I find books about health, illness, and death fascinating. Part of it is I’m sure, because of what I do for a living (even though I’ve moved, I’m still doing contract work related to mass fatality incidents), although I’d wager that perhaps that’s more of a correlation; the same thing in me that finds it interesting to think about how to handle a mass shooting is probably the same thing that makes me seek out books like this.
Although, to be fair to the author, I’m not sure I’ve ever read a book quite like this one. Ms. O’Farrell is an amazing writer; she’s able to write in a way that walks right up to flowery without ever getting there. She chooses words that at times might be slightly more obscure than necessary, but not so often that it feels affected: it’s just how she writes, and it’s lovely to behold.
It’s also a great juxtaposition to such potentially dark subject matter: nearly dying.
Don’t be confused: this isn’t a book about seeing the light, floating above one’s body during surgery, or anything so mystical. Instead it’s the story of a woman who, at age eight, has encephalitis and nearly dies. After that, she has many other near-death experiences, and only a couple are related to the lasting affects of that illness.
She starts with an essay about the time she managed to avoid being murdered. But not all essays are as dramatic or dire - one involves a flight that goes awry but ultimately is fine (there are likely thousands of people who have had similar experiences), another, a juvenile mistake that any of us could see ourselves making. In fact, save for a couple of instances, I think some of the power in this collection of essays is how mundane some of her brushes with death are. Any of us may have experienced one or two of them; but seventeen? Holy shit.
The last two essays are the longest and most dramatic. The sixteenth brush with death is the story of O’Farrell’s childhood illness; the seventeenth is of her daughters severe chronic illness. See the perspective of an ill child from the child herself, and then as a mother witnessing it in her own child is extraordinarily powerful.
O'Farrell's writing skills serve her well here. What could have been just a list of rather overblown anecdotes succeeds because she is able to pull the reader into each situation, mainly through her ability to describe her changing thoughts and emotions in the moment, but also due to her sharp descriptions. She also made me aware that most of us, myself included, have had brushes with death but never really stop to ponder them, except perhaps in cases where medical intervention is involved.
Please note that I received an advanced reader's copy of this book through my employer, with no expectation that I would review it or give it a positive review.
“You will be bowled over by kindness more times than you will be felled by callousness.”
Died at the hands of two hikers stumbling out of the woods, bent on causing damage to her, and perhaps her baby in the car. Finding the
A childhood case of viral encephalitis rendered her unable to walk and move. She listened as the nurse in the hall mentioned that most likely she would die. When walking on a road less taken, a shady character tried to tie his binocular strap around her neck. Intuitively, she knew she had to remain calm. Glad she had reported this incident to the police, a few days later, a young woman on the same path was found dead, raped and buried in a shallow grave.
While the occurrences might sound depressing, O'Farrell leads the reader to recognize the many times an angel is watching over us, allowing us to escape what would have been a disaster.
Well written, and insightful, this was a good read.
Her life is told around these and other episodes and is non-chronological. She writes vividly and well, and in many instances she "grows" after each incident, although there is no self-pity here. Just a reminder of how fragile life really is.
Recommended.
3 stars
O'Farrell is such a skilled writer that even those events which are mundane are both gripping and revealing. Highly recommended.
Honest and open are the two words I thought of while reading this. The things she shares, private moments, secrets she had held close, but now share. Yet, it her experiences with motherhood that impressed me the most. The sadness of miscarriages, joy of holding a newborn, the terrible concern and the ever preparedness she has at all times with her daughter. The frustration and yes, so much love. Hoping others see beyond the surface to the wonder her daughter is, so poignantly told.
As always when next I read her fiction, after reading these details of her life, it will be with new eyes.
Hope she has a new book in the works, and I thank her for sharing this very personal collection of essays with us, her readers.
Quite amazing!
I'd heard good things about this book, so when I saw it sitting in the staff break room, I thought I'd try the first few pages. O'Farrell's prose immediately sucked me in and won me over. Each chapter
Each chapter is a different narrow escape, well written, suspenseful and told with insight and humor. You could call her unlucky, but to still be here after all this, I think she is quite the opposite--incredibly lucky!! Recommended. O'Farrell is also the author of Hamnet, another great read.
The knowledge that I was lucky to be alive, that it so easily could have been otherwise, skewed my thinking. … What else was I going to do with my independence, my ambulatory state, except exploit it for all it was worth?
I think that the chapter titles and illustrations at the
The books works well as a biography, a science book of sorts, one with cultural/natural world information too.
My favorite chapter was the second to last, and it explains the rest of the book, and my next favorite was the last chapter, which does the same, and deeply touched my heart too.
It definitely made me think of my many brushes with death.
The author is a sort of risk taker, though it turns out she is very careful to avoid certain risks, but she has experienced a breadth and depth of what the world has to offer and some, though only some, of her brushes with death are due to experiences she chose to have. She is an adventurer by her own admission. I admire her. She does mention how she could have gone the opposite path, in reaction to an early (more than) brush with death, and I presume meant living life more carefully, timidly. But I’m more like that, always have been, in reaction to my early dangers, and yet I could count up quite a few times when my life could easily have ended, when the risk of that happening was not a minor one. Having an unsupervised adolescence and growing up when and where I did, perhaps my adaptive style did work to my advantage? Yet at 5, 6, 2 times at least at 13, 2 times at 14, and I could keep on…I could have maybe written a book such as this, but I’d have to be as engaging a storyteller and as good a writer as the author of this book, and she’s really, really good. I’m now interested in reading her fiction and definitely whatever other non-fiction books she writes.
This memoir is based on Ms. O'Farrell's 17 encounters with death....usually her own, and often as a result of her behaviour. It is an
There are three things that I took from the book. One, is the healing power of touch, Second, the thoughtlessness of so many of our big institutions. Ms. O'Farrell talks about feeling "so unheard, so disregarded, so disbelieved..." Third, the great power of positivity.
The book is not chronological and I wondered why. In an interview, the author says she was trying to build tension -- wanting the reader to keep wondering about her childhood illness. I think knowing that up front would have helped me understand her better as I was reading. And there was plenty of tension in her various experiences!
I've never read any of Ms. O'Farrell's fiction, and I plan to.
I was shocked
Her stories are told with the same warmth and wry sense of humor she shares in her books.
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