I am, I am, I am by Maggie O'Farrell

This is a biography but I don't think you will find many others like it. Maggie O'Farrell seems to have had more than her fair share of near-death experiences, and all this trauma allowed for seventeen chapters with a different traumatic event every time.

Some of the events are health related, but on several occasions something just happened out of the blue that could have ended her life in an instant. Obviously she has survived everything that has been thrown at her, but it does make you wonder why some people seem to have so much to deal with when others sail through life with hardly a bump in the road. She nearly died from a childhood illness and then had to spend a couple of years in a wheelchair and never fully recovered all her muscular tone or brain reaction times. That residual low level of disability then went on to cause her great problems in childbirth, and on two other occasions she nearly drowned because her brain couldn't calculate how she was positioned in the water. Some people have told her that she is unlucky but she insists she is lucky to have got through everything.

Maggie O'Farrell has a way with detail that places the reader right in the moment. She can spin a yarn and tell a tale in a way that draws you in because she doesn't give everything away too soon. You have to wait. There is an unravelling of each story that slowly builds the tension and reveals human reaction to every step of the way. It's surprising how many times there are flickers of the dark side of human nature as other people react to her circumstances. Some people can deal kindly with disability and ill health, and others never take the time to discover the facts - sadly, this also includes doctors.

After reading the book, I am left with a great admiration for O'Farrell's resilience and steely determination to press on with her life and not let anything hold her back. I hope her life is a little quieter from now on.

Comments

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