I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death
Maggie O'Farrell
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.
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3.5
Started off super intrigued, but as the chapters went on, I felt like it lost steam a bit. Still good!
-They are, all of them, waiting because that is what teenagers who grow up in seaside towns do. They wait. For something to end, for something to begin.
-It seems to me that the act of walking away from my friend–yesterday, today, the day before?-- has unloosed something within me, almost as if he has retained the end of some vital thread and my leaving means that it has been unraveling ever since, stretching out between me and all that I have left behind. How far can it extend and will it break and shall I ever be able to wind it back in?
-He enfolds it in both of his. I gaze up at him mutely. I had not known, until that moment, what a lonely experience it is to be in danger, in the middle of a room full of people who are frantically working to save your life.
-When you are a child, no one tells you that you’re going to die. You have to work it out for yourself. Clues may include: your mother crying but then pretending not to; your siblings being kept away from you; doctors looking at you with an expression of concentration, gravity and a certain fascination; nurses avoiding your eye; relatives traveling great distances to visit you. Hospital isolation rooms, invasive procedures and groups of medical students are also reliable signs. See also: great presents.
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