Nonfiction Review: I am, I am, I am by Maggie O'Farrell

Title: I am, I am, I am: Seventeen Brushes with Death

Author: Maggie O'Farrell

Year published: 2018

Category: Adult nonfiction (memoir)

Pages: 304 pages

Rating: 4.5 out of 5

Location: (my 2025 Google Reading map): UK, France, India, Tanzania, Chile, and Italy

Summary: 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.

Review: Why am I reading this only a few days after Nonfiction November ended?! Oh well. I haven't read anything else by O'Farrell, but last month Les at Coastal Horizons recommended this on her blog, and I thought it sounded good, so in I dove. Wow!

How can one person have had so many brushes with death? And why is the book not depressing with fear at its center? O'Farrell writes beautifully (are her novels like this?!) and pulls the reader into each story as she weaves the scary, the beautiful, and the sad. And, really, not all the stories/chapters are about death at all, but about life experiences that could have led to death, or almost led to death or serious injury. Through each situation we learn more about the author, about life, and about relationships as she weaves tangential stories into the main one.

The story that struck me most was "Body and Bloodstream, 2005," which is about miscarriage. I have miscarried twice, the first time I was naive and didn't realize what was happening, though every detail of the experience is etched in my brain. The second time, my then-husband and I were newly married and trying to get pregnant. I miscarried very early this second time, so it wasn't painful and scarring and certainly not later-term like O'Farrell's experience and those of some of my friends. However, for the past 25 years, on July 10, I wonder what that child would have been like.

I'm not sure why I shared such a personal story in a book review. Perhaps because, as O'Farrell says, it is still a taboo subject even though so many women experience it. This book is full of life experiences, some that are common (rip tides, intestinal disease, miscarraige, or scary encounters with strangers) and some that are less so. It's a really good read.

Challenges for which this counts:

• Literary Escapes--India and Chile