📚 No life without death. Irish novelist Maggie O’Farrell, the author of Hamnet, The Marriage Portrait, and seven other bestsellers, is one of our age’s most brilliant wordsmiths — given her range and lyrical diversity, one would imagine she had lived several lifetimes. In her 2017 memoir, I Am, I Am, I Am, that idea appears not to be too farfetched, as the author recounts 17 near-death experiences that left her born anew, one way or another.

Memoirs tend to be self-serving, but O’Farrell’s is anything but. Agonizingly honest, viscerally human, and linguistically electric, O’Farrell’s memoir dissects the idea of life — what it means to take it for granted, and what it means to see it almost taken away from you time and again. Over 300 pages and 17 chapters, told not in chronological order but rather in a way that traces O’Farrell’s physical body and the memories every tissue holds, the author presents a series of tales that feed into one’s fears — what if everything that could go wrong does? What happens after?

“Neck” reads the chapter title, a medical illustration in tow. At the age of 18, O’Farrell is walking alone when she realizes the man in her periphery doesn’t seem to be going away. Moments later, she instinctively realizes she is facing imminent danger, narrowly escaping. The chapter sees the encounter narrated in detail, extrapolating the incident to discuss police ambivalence, the constant belittling of women’s concerns, and what happens when victims are not believed. O’Farrell had escaped that night, yet that very man would come to murder a 22-year-old woman days later.

So goes the rest of the memoir — each chapter a slow and steady dissection of a singular moment in O’Farrell’s life in which death came knocking, only to walk away empty-handed. These brushes are not exclusively her own, with some attributed to her chronically-ill daughter, for whom this memoir was written. O’Farrell’s life, to the reader, at times may seem incomprehensible — how does one go through so much and still manage to walk away enlivened? How can hope remain alive in the face of death? These are questions to which the answers are inferred between the lines, traced by a woman’s — a mother’s — braving of one storm after another.

“It is the strangest sensation, not being able to move. It is not a heavy feeling, as you might imagine, but light.” I Am, I Am, I Am is one of our favorite memoirs for a variety of reasons, prime amongst them being O’Farrell’s vulnerability, her willingness to admit to her own shortcomings, and her unfiltered confessions. The memoir also goes beyond personal admittances and deftly tackles a variety of timely topics and issues in a manner only a seasoned writer like O’Farrell can accomplish.

Gripping and awe-inspiring, the memoir is one that — despite its length — will prove a quick read. The Women’s Prize for Fiction laureate proves that sometimes life can indeed sometimes be stranger than fiction, that beautiful things can exist in the crevices of those which are not, and that life is a mercurial thing, never to be taken for granted.

WHERE TO GET IT- You can find the paperback version at Diwan and Aseer El Kotob. The eBook is also available on Amazon.

Tags: