A review by massivepizzacrust
I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O'Farrell

emotional fast-paced

4.0

I read this book over two days and I just couldn't put it down. It's a really fascinating idea, trying to tell the story of a life through close encounters with death. I found the writing really engrossing and approachable and I enjoyed how we got to understand the author's decisions in the initial anecdotes as the book progressed.

I'm not sure I really understand why the chapters were arranged the way they were. By the end of the book I didn't really have a sense that there was an overall arch to the book (past the connection between her childhood death experiences and her daughter's). I thought some of the stories brought more to the table than others - the stories centering on her pregnancies and her childhood were mostly beautiful, but the story with the mysterious man and the dog was confusing and weirdly half-confessional.

Reading about someone else's preoccupation with death was a relief to me. It's something that's been hard for me to deal with sometimes and this was a really different view on it. I don't think I'll be making any unprepared trips to remote countries any time soon though.
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