I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O'Farrell

AS FEATURED ON DESERT ISLAND DISCS, BIG SCOTTISH BOOK CLUB AND THE ZOE BALL BOOKCLUB, A BOOK OF THE YEAR IN THE SUNDAY TIMES, THE TIMES, GUARDIAN, IRISH TIMES, OBSERVER, RED and THE TELEGRAPH. *SHORTLISTED FOR THE PEN ACKERLEY PRIZE FOR MEMOIR AND AUTOBIOGRAPHY 2018* I AM, I AM, I AM is a memoir with a difference - the unputdownable story of an extraordinary woman's life in near-death experiences. Insightful, inspirational, gorgeously written, it is a book to be read at a sitting, a story you finish newly conscious of life's fragility, determined to make every heartbeat count. A childhood illness she was not expected to survive. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. A terrifying encounter on a remote path. A mismanaged labour in an understaffed hospital. Shocking, electric, unforgettable, this is the extraordinary memoir from Costa Novel-Award winner and Sunday Timesbestselling author Maggie O'Farrell. It is a book to make you question yourself. What would you do if your life was in danger, and what would you stand to lose?

Maggie O'Farrell has a way of reaching right through the pages to your heart.

I'm still reeling from this astonishing memoir.

The premise drew me in immediately; it's a memoir told in seventeen stories, each centering on one of O'Farrell's brushes with death. The writing is beautiful, both lyrical and (at times) disturbingly, can't-look-away visceral.

As an anxiety-prone, risk-averse human, I admit I found myself in disbelief at the frequency and ferocity of O'Farrell's near-death experiences (for example, if I'd survived even one of her three near-drownings, I think I'd probably stop swimming for a while or, uh, forever). Her urge to live life to its absolute fullest, to push boundaries and risk bodies, comes in large part from surviving encephalitis as a child. Remarkably, what she takes away from that experience is that the rest of her life is a bonus, something she lucked into, something to be taken the utmost advantage of rather than tucked away safely on a high shelf.

While all the stories are powerful, by far the most harrowing for me is the first, in which she re-encounters a man on a trail and knows implicitly and unequivocally that he means to harm her. The story of her miscarriage was also gut-wrenching.

This was amazing and I'm glad to have read it. I'm embarrassed to admit I've never read Maggie O'Farrell before - no, not even Hamnet! - and this has skyrocketed her to the top of my list.