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Staff Pick
Maggie O’Farrell is no stranger to nearly dying, but when her daughter is diagnosed with a rare immunological disorder, surviving various deadly perils becomes an everyday occurrence. Beautifully written, I Am, I Am, I Am recounts 17 close calls with death, and how those experiences have shaped her. Recommended By Mary Jo S., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
An extraordinary memoir--told entirely in near-death experiences--from one of Britain's best-selling novelists, for fans of Wild, When Breath Becomes Air, and The Year of Magical Thinking.
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.
Review
“Astounding…awe-inspiring…a tour de force." Booklist, starred review
Review
“It takes a deft storyteller to alternate between charming and terrifying on the page but here it is, a set of linked stories that play with that most curious fact: that we experience life’s joys and losses in the context of a mortal vessel. I would follow Maggie Farrell anywhere, even to the edge of death seventeen times.” Kelly Corrigan, New York Times bestselling author of The Middle Place, Glitter and Glue and Tell Me More
Review
“I Am I Am I Am is a gripping and glorious investigation of death that leaves the reader feeling breathless, grateful, and fully alive. Maggie O’Farrell is a miracle in every sense. I will never forget this book.” Ann Patchett
About the Author
Born in Northern Ireland in 1972, Maggie O'Farrell grew up in Wales and Scotland and now lives in London. She has worked as a waitress, chambermaid, bike messenger, teacher, arts administrator, and journalist in Hong Kong and London, and as the deputy literary editor of The Independent on Sunday. Her debut novel, After You’d Gone (2000), won a Betty Trask Award and was followed by My Lover’s Lover (2002), The Distance Between Us (2004), winner of a Somerset Maugham Award, The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox (2006), The Hand That First Held Mine (2010), winner of the Costa Novel Award, Instructions for a Heatwave (2013), and, most recently, This Must Be the Place (2016).
Maggie O'Farrell on PowellsBooks.Blog
I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes With Death is a memoir with a difference. Told in fragments, moving back and forward through time, it describes the months I spent in hospital after contracting encephalitis at the age of eight. It relates a teenage moment of madness by the sea, an encounter with a disturbed man on a mountainside...
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