Memoirs are not my thing, but I was unable to ignore a couple of my GR friends' fine reviews for this book.  It's good to amble over to a different genre from time to time.  This one will have you looking back at the times of your life for near misses, and how your decisions may have changed your direction, if only slightly.  I am not a lover of memoirs in general, butI am glad to have read this one.I am returning to the dark side now. 

I have never read any of Maggie O’Farrell’s fiction. It is not for lack of good intentions. I have certainly heard good things about her writing, which is what made me jump at chance to read an advance copy of this brief memoir.At first blush, the way O’Farrell has chosen to organize her memoir is odd. Each chapter is focused on a near death experience. The chapters are out of chronological order. And while each chapter deals with a particular experience, it meanders to many other parts of O’Far...

An amazing memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes With Death, is exactly what the title says, the author's near fatal experiences in her extraordinary life. Read the first chapter and you will be hooked; her meeting with a rapist and murderer as a teenager will send chills down your spine. She is a brilliant writer and goes inside her near death experiences to snatch from them and learn from them, whether it be accidents, illness, depraved strangers, or ill luck, she emerges triumphant. How...

I have read three of her novels and count Maggie O’Farrell as one of my favorite writers and I know I have to get to those that I haven’t read. This memoir is as beautifully written as her novels. O’Farrell shares with us some very personal experiences, memories of times in her life when she was in danger, close to death. As in her novels, she had me feeling and thinking about the complexities of life, sometimes the danger that lies near all of us. While she writes about things that happened to

I am a fan of Maggie O' Farrell Novels and love her descriptive writing. Her story telling is unique and fresh. Her latest book is totally different as it's a memoir that is quirky, interesting, honest, revealing and vivid.Told through 17 near death experiences that the author experienced throughout her life, you find yourself reading with bated breath as O Farrell draws you in with words and descriptions that make the reading experience very real and poignant. At O’Farrell’s near-catastrophic

I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death is a memoir by Maggie O’Farrell, recounting her near death experiences over the course of her life. She is in her mid-forties at the time of publication and the memoir includes instances from childhood, adult life, and parenthood. Some of the occurrences detailed in the book felt like a stretch to classify as “near death” (to me, anyway) yet as with any memoir, I understand experiences are deeply personal. In particular, I found the chapters about O...

4.5★“I still cannot bear anyone to touch my neck: not my husband, not my children, not a kindly doctor, who once wanted to check my tonsils. I flinch away before I even register why.”This is from the first chapter, “Neck – 1990”, which is when she was 18 or so. There are 17 chapters, each titled with a part of the body and a year, ranging from 1975, when she was three, to today.She introduces the book with this quotation from Sylvia Plath: I took a deep breath and listened to the oldbrag of my h...

OMG OMG OMG! Pogo stick time!Dear Maggie O’Farrell,I’m bouncing high, zigzagging through your 17 brushes with death. Barefoot because my socks were knocked off. I can’t stop! Yep, I’m downright manic! What an amazing memoir you wrote! One of the best books I’ve read this year!I am I am I am absolutely in love with your book. I can’t help it that I’m stuttering. It’s that or remain speechless, which isn’t my style. My brain is on fire! Matchy-matchy: My head, your language. Oh, your tone! The way...

oooh, goodreads choice awards semifinalist for best memoir/autobiography 2018! what will happen?At the time, I gaze up at the sky, the birds, the fast-moving clouds, and I am thinking about the dense forest behind us, about how I do not want to be dragged in there, not at all. I do not want to see the trees closing over my head, feel the scratch and pluck of bushes against my skin, my clothes, the cold damp of the ground in there. My thoughts are very simple. They pulse through my head: let me g...

Love her fiction so wanting to read her memoir was a no brainier. A different take for sure as she recounts the near death experiences she has encountered in her life. Reading this made me think of all the mishaps I have had, that could have turned fatal. Something I think we all share to various degrees.Honest and open are the two words I thought of while reading this. The things she shares, private moments, secrets she had held close, but now share. Yet, it her experiences with motherhood that...

Unless a ‘memoir’ literally shifts me -changes my thinking - transforms me in some major way - I tend to retreat to my standard 3 star rating.I didn’t equally ‘enjoy’ each story in this collection - It’s a mix collection for me. A few stories felt embellished. In the middle of the book - I started to feel as if I had enough. A couple of the stories felt a little narcissistic—....but then I felt sad for Maggie’s sick child - heck I felt awful for Maggie, too, when ‘she’ was a child in the hospita...

‘’There is nothing unique or special in a near-death experience. They are not rare; everyone, I would venture, has had them, at one time or another, perhaps without even realising it.’’ How difficult it is to write a text about a memoir...No matter if you liked it or not, no matter whether you shared the writer’s views or not, a memoir is a testament of someone’s heart and soul and how can anyone dissect it so light-heartedly? This memoir by Maggie O’Farrell is one of the most poignant, power

I've been looking forward to reading I Am, I Am, I Am for so long because so many people have loved it. But I think this is a case where my expectations just didn't match what I got. I thought it would be a thrilling collection of essays about near death experiences. What I got was very little of that. Only a few of the experiences were even that interesting or nearing death while the rest were a stretch to fit that mold.Probably the single thing I most disliked in this book was the author's wri...

I might have been too excited about this. I have been looking forward to this memoir ever since I first saw this stunning cover. I finally caved in and bought myself a copy and started it the moment it arrived. And I enjoyed this. But it wasn’t quite the revelation I was maybe expecting.I love the framing of this memoir: Maggie O’Farrell tells her story as a series of essays, each concentrating on a near death experience. I do like memoirs that play with format and I enjoyed the unchronological

"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."One day early in February, we had a rare day of sun and sixty degrees after having just endured subzero temperatures the week before… brrr! I could not get my sneakers on fast enough. I ran out the door without a jacket to get a little fresh air and exercise. Now, I very rarely listen to audiobooks. Don’t get me wrong,...

4****"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.”This is the memoir of Maggie O'Farrel documenting the near bushes of death that have been riddled through out her life. Each chapter introduces a different time and age of the author and her experiences grazing near to death. We are witness to the encounters with death that the author has endured, for example; nea...

”And you want to travel with her, and you want to travel blindAnd you know that you can trust herFor she's touched your perfect body with her mind” -- Suzanne, Leonard Cohen, Songwriters: Leonard CohenWhen I saw that this book was one of the choices in the Best Book of the Year awards for goodreads, I wanted to squeeze this one in today, and I’m so glad that I did. A brilliant memoir that doesn’t really read like a memoir, the writing is her standard beautiful, brutally honest, somewhat bare-bon...

The author has certainly led an interesting and adventurous life! This book is a series of essays, all related to her near brushes with death and uniquely titled according to the body part that nearly did her in: cranium, lungs, circulatory system, etc. She is either extraordinarily unlucky or her admittedly risky lifestyle makes her more vulnerable than most. Or maybe it’s a little of both.As with any essay collection, some of the stories resonated with me more than others but they are all beau...

I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. Properly explain my feelings about this book :)

This was an outstanding book. It was excellent on many levels. One was the relative uniqueness of the memoir — we learned about interesting aspects of Maggie O’Farrell’s life via 17 near-death experiences. I remember when first coming across a GR review of this book the reviewer listed a number of near-death experiences of his. And I immediately thought of near-death experiences in my own personal life. I would think most people have had close encounters with death or if not death a catastrophe....