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_askthebookbug 's review for:
I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death
by Maggie O'Farrell
dark
emotional
reflective
medium-paced
• r e v i e w •
"We are, all of us, wandering about in a state of oblivion, borrowing our time, seizing our days, escaping our fates, slipping through loopholes, unaware of when the axe may fall." - Maggie O'Farrell.
Death isn't something that we openly talk about; both the possibility and previous elusion of it. Just one near death experience is enough to shake us up badly but imagine death knocking on your door seventeen times. Maggie O'Farrell's memoir is as candid as it gets as she talks about her fears, her vulnerabilities and also of her losses. I have always shared a fondness for memoirs but this one was unlike any book that I've ever read before. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that all the chapters are written intimately, as if Maggie is your friend and she's narrating how close she was to death more than a handful of times. One can't help but ponder over how fragile our lives truly are and how anything/anyone, at any given time is capable enough to take that away from us.
The chapters are named after body parts, like an intimation about what to expect from them. Very quickly you'll notice how there isn't a proper timeline of the incidents so at one point you might be reading about Maggie as a child and the next speaks about her being a grown woman. From being a child with a serious illness that almost took her life to being stalked by a murderer, her life is frighteningly different. It's baffling to think how close she came to joining hands with death, each experience leaving behind a fresh trail of goosebumps on my skin. She also speaks of her pregnancy and the hostility of the doctor who refused to listen to her medical history. A man patronizing a woman for choosing the birthing process as per her convenience was something that infuriated me to no end. There are so many horrifying experiences that she went through, be it her near drowning experience or a mugging incident. The last chapter speaks of her daughter who is surrounded by possibilities of death every day due to severe allergies to almost everything. She brings out our empathetic sides as she talks about motherhood. I Am I Am I Am is as much about life as it is about death.
4.4/5.
"We are, all of us, wandering about in a state of oblivion, borrowing our time, seizing our days, escaping our fates, slipping through loopholes, unaware of when the axe may fall." - Maggie O'Farrell.
Death isn't something that we openly talk about; both the possibility and previous elusion of it. Just one near death experience is enough to shake us up badly but imagine death knocking on your door seventeen times. Maggie O'Farrell's memoir is as candid as it gets as she talks about her fears, her vulnerabilities and also of her losses. I have always shared a fondness for memoirs but this one was unlike any book that I've ever read before. Perhaps it had to do with the fact that all the chapters are written intimately, as if Maggie is your friend and she's narrating how close she was to death more than a handful of times. One can't help but ponder over how fragile our lives truly are and how anything/anyone, at any given time is capable enough to take that away from us.
The chapters are named after body parts, like an intimation about what to expect from them. Very quickly you'll notice how there isn't a proper timeline of the incidents so at one point you might be reading about Maggie as a child and the next speaks about her being a grown woman. From being a child with a serious illness that almost took her life to being stalked by a murderer, her life is frighteningly different. It's baffling to think how close she came to joining hands with death, each experience leaving behind a fresh trail of goosebumps on my skin. She also speaks of her pregnancy and the hostility of the doctor who refused to listen to her medical history. A man patronizing a woman for choosing the birthing process as per her convenience was something that infuriated me to no end. There are so many horrifying experiences that she went through, be it her near drowning experience or a mugging incident. The last chapter speaks of her daughter who is surrounded by possibilities of death every day due to severe allergies to almost everything. She brings out our empathetic sides as she talks about motherhood. I Am I Am I Am is as much about life as it is about death.
4.4/5.