Acclaimed novelist Maggie O’Farrell delivers a revelatory take on memoir, presented through 17 stories of sidestepping death. The result is visceral, affecting, miraculous and strange.
Chosen for the Zoe Ball Book Club
Longlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize 2018
'[An] extraordinary memoir... uncomfortable and compelling... fluent, poised, packed with colourful details' - Observer
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.
When Maggie O'Farrell's daughter was diagnosed with a severe immunology disorder, she found herself writing stories to make sense of how closely with live alongside the possibility of death and the reality of pain. She began to look back at her own life, her own near-fatal illness as a child and the moments through her life where she was forced to look her own mortality in the face.
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.
A heartfelt and tenaciously powerful condensation of what it means to be alive, this book will appeal to readers of Cheryl Strayed's Wild or Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking.
Publisher: Headline Publishing Group
ISBN: 9781472240767
Number of pages: 304
Weight: 220 g
Dimensions: 196 x 126 x 20 mm
If you want evidence that life can be just as dramatic as fiction, you couldn't wish for better than Maggie O'Farrell's stunning memoir - Louise Doughty, Guardian Books of the Year
Maggie O'Farrell is a highly accomplished author with seven novels to her name but she achieves something altogether more powerful and direct in this astonishing memoir... Each chapter is an accomplished piece of memoir writing in its own right. The cumulative effect is extraordinary and I felt my understanding of what it means to be a human and a mother grew. Where other writers may be playing with paper, O'Farrell takes up a bow and arrow and aims right at the human heart - Cathy Rentzenbrink, The Times
I have never read a book about death that has made me feel so alive. A heart-stopping, addictive read - Tracy Chevalier
I adored every minute. A triumph - Joanna Cannon
Extraordinary. A beautiful testament to courage and grace under fire without an ounce of self-pity - Kate Mosse
It is absolutely, in every possible sense of the word, brilliant. It shines with wit and candour and insight. It is spectacularly moving, funny, impeccably controlled, artful and sincere. It's a gift - Max Porter
By turns chilling, terrifying, deeply moving, funny, recognisable, wild, simple, complicated. A rich celebration - Rachel Joyce
Quite simply astonishing... reminds the reader of the fierce joy of being alive. To my mind, I AM, I AM, I AM is Maggie O'Farrell's greatest work to date - Louise O'Neill
The final chapter is one of the boldest and most terrifying things I have read this year - Scotsman
She is a breathtakingly good writer, and brings all her elegance and poise as a novelist to the story of her own life - Guardian
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
[An] extraordinary memoir... uncomfortable and compelling... fluent, poised, packed with colourful details - Observer
A mystical howl, a thrumming, piercing reminder of how very closely we all exist alongside what could have happened, but didn't - New York Times Book Review
It's a prayer for perspective that reminds readers to see every dodged bullet as the gift of new life and a reminder not to sweat the small stuff - Daily Mail
A profoundly affecting, powerful and life-affirming book. If you only read one memoir this year, make it O'Farrell's - Sunday Express
O'Farrell has a compelling and arresting writing style that fills in a scene quickly and engagingly, to great dramatic and narrative effect - New Statesman
Exceptionally accomplished and emotionally sophisticated - Scotsman
One of the most life affirming reads of the summer - Irish Independent
I can count on one hand the books that made me cry, and still have two fingers spare. I Am, I Am, I Am is one of them - Irish Times
O'Farrell's emotional acuity makes it a powerful account of a determined and thoughtful life. Her fiction is always a masterclass in empathy and the same is true of I Am, I Am, I Am which lingers even longer in the memory for being drawn from real life. - Daily Express
A remarkable and life-affirming autobiography - Good Housekeeping
I have never read a book about death that has made me feel so alive. Beautifully observed, exquisitely written, Maggie's memoir is a heart-stopping, addictive read. She has raised the bar on memoir to a height few others will reach - Tracy Chevalier
A beautiful, strangely reassuring read - The i
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
A remarkable book - Scotsman
It's a memoir replete with courage, heartbreak and optimism: the most life-affirming book of the year - Sunday Express
A mesmerising read - The Sunday Times
I'm an avid fan of Maggie O'farrell and was totally gripped from start to finish.
The idea of basing an autobiography around seventeen occasions when death was narrowly missed is unusual to say the least but...
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If life teaches us one thing it is that each day is precious and that we need to live each day and grab hold of life and never let, go. The Costa Awarding writer Maggie O’Farrell has released a memoir like no other.... More
Thank you to the publishers for this review copy.
Having never read Maggie O'Farrell's fiction books before I had no idea what to expect from her work (note this is non fiction).
Friends had recommended this...
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