I am, I am, I am: A Review

The title of Maggie O’Farrell’s memoir, I am, I am, I am: Seventeen Brushes with Death channels the author’s inner Sylvia Plath, the title being a direct quote from her novel, The Bell Jar. The Irish native author captures every instance in her life where she almost died, in her words, where she “brushed” death. It’s hard to believe that this book is in fact a memoir, because every story O’Farrell tells seems like fiction or some distant myth that you never thought could actually happen to someone.

O’Farrell leads you down a haunting path with each chapter as she unfolds her adventurous personality through daring and coincidental tales. It will remind you of what it means to be human, to feel the blood coursing through your veins. It will remind you that each breath you take is precious, and that coming out alive on the other side of life’s challenges will leave you stronger and wiser. Her visceral language and beautiful ability to craft the terror surrounding each near death experience will leave you hungry for the next story.

I was continually astonished to find that the next story could be worse than the previous. I won’t reveal O’Farrell’s stories but I will say that somehow she finds a way to connect to the reader. She’ll make you crave the salt spray of the ocean, the flutter in your heart as a plane hits turbulence, the sweaty adrenaline of hiking alone in the woods, the overbearing desire to bring life into this world.

This memoir is about sublimity – the combination of awe and terror, of beauty and fear, of the slight chance that we or our loved ones could lose our lives at any moment. I would recommend this book to anyone needing inspiration to be more daring in life, to anyone who needs help embracing the terrifying.