Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death

I promised myself that I would read more of Maggie O’Farrell after reading Hamnet and falling in love with her writing style. Unsurprisingly, I loved this and was so sad when it came to an end. The audiobook performance was phenomenal and I am baffled by the life this woman has lived. So many of the passages have been floating around in my mind since reading them. This might be the first book I buy a physical copy of for the purpose of highlighting and annotating.

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kelly_e's review against another edition

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emotional reflective medium-paced

3.25

Title: I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death
Author: Maggie O'Farrell
Genre: Memoir
Rating: 3.25
Pub Date: August 27 2017

T H R E E • W O R D S

Intimate • Unconventional • Articulate

📖 S Y N O P S I S

I Am, I Am, I Am is the deeply personal memoir from British novelist Maggie O'Farrell, exploring seventeen brushes with death sprinkled throughout her life. From a childhood illness to a a frightening encounter deep in the jungle to dealing with a child diagnosed with severe allergies, each essay explores the preciousness of life.

💭 T H O U G H T S

This book had been on my TBR since it's release, and I honestly thought I was going to love it. Not only did it come highly recommended to me, but the beautiful cover and synopsis were right up my alley. However, it failed to engage me completely the whole way through. It is a deeply personal and insightful account of the fragility of life, yet I wasn't overly moved. What didn't work for me was the structure. Personally, I think a chronological order of events would have benefitted the narration and made for a more enjoyable reading experience. With that said, her writing is stunningly beautiful and she explores the complexities of life in a delicate manner.

I anticipated loving this book, and honestly it didn't live up to my expectations. While this wasn't the powerful, moving memoir I was hoping for, it was still worth reading.

📚 R E C O M M E N D • T O
• readers who enjoyed The Year of Magical Thinking
• Maggie O'Farrell fans

🔖 F A V O U R I T E • Q U O T E S

"The people who teach us something retain a particularly vivid place in our memoires. I'd been a parent for about ten minutes when I met the man, but he taught me, with a small gesture, one of the most important things about the job: kindness, intuition, touch, and that sometimes you don't even need words."

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spacecowpal's review against another edition

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dark emotional hopeful reflective sad

5.0

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ambero's review against another edition

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challenging emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective sad fast-paced

4.0

The first chapter hit me and was one of the few things I’ve read this year that I connected with

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jldraycott's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional funny informative inspiring reflective fast-paced

4.5

This is a really interesting approach to a memoir, focusing on the author's near death experiences and providing life details almost as an afterthought. I haven't had any near death experiences yet the way she wrote about hers was somehow very relatable.

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