As human beings, we always seem to be so fascinated with death. The more detail, the better, even if we’ve got a squirmish dispotition. Even if we really don’t want to hear what happened we tend to still ask the questions. What happened? How did it happen? Could it happen to me? We don’t always ask these questions outloud, but our fascination with the departed lingers in our media, in our creative endevours, and in our culture as a whole.
Maggie O’Farrell’s memoir, I AM I AM I AM, is an account of her seventeen near-death experiences. Told in a seemingly random order, the book is scattered throughout with tales of adventure, of misjudgement, of human cruelity, of survival. And its an enthralling read of death-defying wonder. Reading these accounts makes you wonder how any one person could suffer so many in the first place, but it also makes you realise that every day every one of us probably experience near-death scenarios, without even realising it. Maggie O’Farrell’s memoir truly makes you take life by the horns and enjoy every moment of it.
The whole narrative structure points to how truly delicate life is. Little windows into someone else’s life makes us look internally at our own.
One near-death experience in the book is when Maggie is walking with an ex-lover, and they stumble across a dog. Oh, a cute dog, that’s nice. They continue their walk and the dog follows. Such cuteness. They come to a road. A busy road. There’s a truck coming. Better hold onto that dog’s collar for fear of it running out into the road. As Maggie bends down to hold the collar, she feels the metal of the truck scrape the top of her head. She feels her hair being pulled with the moving vehicle, feels the closeness of death a hairswidth away – quite literally. This, this chapter stuck with me. It isn’t the most gripping near-death experience Maggie has (is that even the right word?), but it’s the most real that I can relate to. I have done this so many times with my own dog. Bent my head to hold their collar. Have I ever come this close to death? I wouldn’t know. I don’t think so? Nevertheless, it points to just how delicate we are, and just how easy it is for us to lose our lives. In an instance, life can be snatched out from beneath us. A sobering thought as you read, but isn’t that good? Don’t we realise then just how important it is to live our lives to the fullest, now? We just never know when it might end.
I won’t lie, what first drew me to this book was the book title. I am a big fan of Sylvia Plath and this famous phrase from her book, The Bell Jar, enthralled me. I wanted to know why the author used it as a title. It’s the version of the phrase from the beginning of the book, where Esther is starting to fall into the tendrils of depression. You can tell this as it lacks the punctuation. It’s floating, lost. It’s between worlds, almost. Just like Maggie, continuously balancing on the line between life and death. Like all of us, we just aren’t always aware. Plath’s words signify Esther’s disconnection between herself and the world she lives in. Maggie O’Farrell’s title is almost like the disconnection between the life Maggie lived, and the one she’s in now. These were her wild years, almost. Testing how far she could push at life before life pushed back. A fitting title, lending a grip of reality to the text. Almost as if the title is Maggie’s totem, grounding her,and us, similar to those used in ‘Inception‘.
I don’t often read memoirs. I think the only other non-fiction book I’ve ever properly read (out of choice) was Stephen King’s On Writing. I enjoyed this account, though. I enjoyed the reality of the text, and knowing it was all real added an extra layer of thickness to what I was reading. Like peanut butter. This all really happened. It really could happen to me. Or you. Or anyone. It just so happened to happen to Maggie.
I AM I AM I AM really makes you want to live life to the fullest. To enjoy those moments with family and friends, to not let time slip through your fingers scrolling through social media or worrying about things that just don’t matter. All that matters is family, is friends, and if you’re happy. And if you’re living the life you want to live. Who gives two fucks if you didn’t get that promotion, go out and get a new job. Control your life. You are the protagonist of your own life, after all.
Overall, I would give Maggie O’Farrell’s I AM I AM I AM 4.5/5 for it’s powerful text, and the way it made me look at my own life. I want to read more Maggie O’Farrell now, and I’m excited to explore an author’s work I would probably not have looked at twice previously. I’d recommend if you’re looking for something with a bit of guts, but you can get through quite painlessly.
My Paper Lungs 