I know I have a few moments like this in my life that I look back on and realize “that could have been me”. But after the fact, you realize just how close you came to death. In the moment, adrenaline starts pumping, and your instincts tell you to do whatever you can to stay alive, or keep those you are with alive. I think a huge part of this memoir was the emphasis on hindsight versus the way you feel in the moment of a scary/near-death experience. Especially if that strange man turns out to be a murderer a few weeks later. Something as simple as going on a walk by yourself and being approached by a strange man, in hindsight, could have been the end of your life. In this memoir, Maggie O’Farrell touches on so many different versions of a near-death experience from illness, to child loss, to a freak encounter with a serial killer. 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.

Seventeen discrete encounters with Maggie at different ages, in different locations, reveal a whole life in a series of tense, visceral snapshots.

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. An encounter with a disturbed man on a remote path. A teenage yearning to escape that nearly ended in disaster. The childhood illness that left her bedridden for a year, which she was not expected to survive. 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. We are never closer to life than when we brush up against the possibility of death. I might even go so far as to say I think every woman should read Maggie’s story because there’s something for pretty much everyone to relate to. I am so glad I prioritized reading this in my summer TBR because this book was incredibly fascinating and eye-opening. I grabbed a paperback ARC of this memoir back in January before I went back to school, so I couldn’t get around to reading it until this summer.

I Am, I Am, I Am by Maggie O'Farrell