Maggie O’Farrell is quickly becoming an author who I just know, before I even read the blurb, will deliver. I’ve only read three of her books so far, and each has been completely different (first was Hamnet which is a fictional novel about Shakespeare’s family, then Instructions for a Heatwave which is about a family who are each struggling to sort out their lives set during the heatwave of 1976, and this one which is a memoir). And yet, there has been a particular style to each that has made them all unmistakably O’Farrell books.
I have been thinking a lot about how to describe what it is about O’Farrell’s writing that just makes it so darn good. She is excellent at really getting into the internal worlds of her characters. So far, each one has been brought to life on the page in a way few other authors accomplish to the same degree. The only exception to this, oddly, is when she’s writing about herself. She does explore her personality and upbringing, she talks about how different events in her life affected her outlook and the way she lived, and she did a fine job. As good as most memoirs. But it was notably not the same as reading one of her fictional characters. Her fictional characters have layers, quirks, flaws and are all full of an intense life force, regardless of their circumstances. You want more for all of them, regardless of who they are or what their lives look like. This book felt…. maybe a little colder, more a recounting of events than really feeling my way into someone’s mind and emotional landscape.
That said, some of the other elements that make O’Farrell’s writing so wonderfully vibrant were here. She knows how to tell a story in such a way that the reader is unable to detach from the book without a lot of effort. She had me on the edge of my seat, over and over again. The book is structured, as the subtitle suggests, as a series of vignettes that are interconnected by the main theme – mortal peril. I was scared for her, I was angry at the circumstances that happened to her or the people who would hurt her. She isn’t always the one who is in danger, but she is always part of the story. And the story is always told with brilliant pacing and suspense.
Interestingly, the part of this book that actually stood out to me the most was the chapter in which she discusses her daughter’s life-threatening allergies and shares an experience they had while on vacation far from a hospital. In this story she is someone I recognize – a mother who is fighting to keep her child safe, even while knowing that ultimately she doesn’t have that power. She talks about what it feels like to love someone so fiercely but know – really KNOW – that they could be taken from you at any moment. Not in the vague sense of, “accidents can happen to anyone,” or “we all die sometime,” but in a very real context of having seen it nearly happen and knowing how fine that line between healthy and dangerously close to death is. Her love for her daughter is visceral, and it leaps off the page. That part of the book alone was worth reading it for, but the rest has plenty to keep the pages turning feverishly.
This isn’t my favourite of O’Farrell’s books that I’ve read so far, but I think that says more about how beautifully written the other two books were than anything negative about this one. It’s a fantastic memoir – its structure reminded me a little of Sandi Toksvig’s memoir Between the Stops which is based on the route taken by the number 12 bus she took from her house to work at the BBC. Each stop holds historical or personal significance, and she shares tidbits about her life as they are brought up by a stop she passes, or interesting historical information unique to an area viewed through the window. She even discusses some of the other passengers on the bus. I’d never seen a memoir with such a seemingly incongruous concept at its base, but it was wonderful. Similarly O’Farrell’s use of these near-death experiences draws us through her life, tells us about her childhood, her family and her experiences in a unique format.
Though not my favourite memoir of all time, nor my favourite O’Farrell book, this is nonetheless a fantastic read. If you’ve ever dealt with chronic medical issues in yourself or a loved one, if you’ve ever had a medical emergency that left you with deficits, if you’ve ever made reckless decisions or found yourself face to face with someone you just know is a threat but don’t know why, this book will share a similar experience with you. If you’ve always wondered how a brush with death (or several) affects someone, that answer is here as well. It’s a book you can read in one sitting, and I promise you will not be bored even once.
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. – Goodreads
Book Title: I Am, I Am, I Am
Author: Maggie O’Farrell
Series: No
Edition: Audiobook
Published By: Knopf
Released: August 2, 2017
Genre: Non-Fiction, Memoir, Near-Death, Family, Motherhood, Illness
Pages: 304
Date Read: July 22, 2024
Rating: 8/10
Average Goodreads Rating: 3.99/5 (44,805 ratings)