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

From Goodreads

I AM, I AM, I AM is Sunday Times bestseller and Costa Novel-Award winner Maggie O'Farrell's electric and shocking memoir of the near death experiences that have punctuated her life; it will appeal to readers of Cheryl Strayed's WILD or Joan Didion's THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING.

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.

This is a memoir with a difference: seventeen encounters with Maggie at different ages, in different locations, reveal to us a whole life in a series of tense, visceral snapshots. It is a book to make you question yourself: what would you do if your life was in danger? How would you react? And what would you stand to lose? I AM, I AM, I AM is a book you will finish newly conscious of your own vulnerability, and determined to make every heartbeat count. 

My thoughts

I chose this for my local WI Reading Group read. I've read some of Maggie O'Farrell's novels and thought this would make a great book to discuss. I gave this a 4 stars or 8/10 and found it a very quick easy read.

Told as seventeen chapters, these seventeen different brushes with death are all mostly about Maggie herself, apart from the last one that goes into some detail about the problems that one of her children (daughter) faces daily due to severe allergies, that can lead to anaphylactic shock. As a parent one of our jobs is to protect our children at all costs. Sadly, sometimes things are taken out of our control and in this case, her daughter and the family live in a state of high alert at all times. We as parents aren't able to wrap our children up in cotton wool, no matter how much we would like to and we all have to get on with life. Maggie and her family get on with life as much as they can, but at times it can be quite restrictive socially and emotionally due to the possible repercussions.

I felt that Maggie was very open about her life and her brushes with death. Most of us will have had similar experiences from time to time during our life, but maybe not quite as many and then again some of us might have had more. We can all be sure of one thing, no one has any idea what any single one of us has been through in our lives or are going through at any time. Life has to go on and we all have to deal with what it throws at us, when that hand is dealt.