I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes With Death

Critics Review

• If you want evidence that life can be just as dramatic as fiction, you couldn’t wish for better than Maggie O’Farrell’s stunning memoir

  Guardian Books of the Year

• Maggie O’Farrell is a highly accomplished author with seven novels to her name but she achieves something altogether more powerful and direct in this astonishing memoir… Each chapter is an accomplished piece of memoir writing in its own right. The cumulative effect is extraordinary and I felt my understanding of what it means to be a human and a mother grew. Where other writers may be playing with paper, O’Farrell takes up a bow and arrow and aims right at the human heart

  The Times

• I have never read a book about death that has made me feel so alive. A heart-stopping, addictive read

  Tracy Chevalier

• I adored every minute. A triumph

  Joanna Cannon

• Extraordinary. A beautiful testament to courage and grace under fire without an ounce of self-pity

  Kate Mosse

• It is absolutely, in every possible sense of the word, brilliant. It shines with wit and candour and insight. It is spectacularly moving, funny, impeccably controlled, artful and sincere. It’s a gift

  Max Porter

• By turns chilling, terrifying, deeply moving, funny, recognisable, wild, simple, complicated. A rich celebration

  Rachel Joyce

• Quite simply astonishing… reminds the reader of the fierce joy of being alive. To my mind, I AM, I AM, I AM is Maggie O’Farrell’s greatest work to date

  Louise O'Neill

• The final chapter is one of the boldest and most terrifying things I have read this year

  Scotsman

• She is a breathtakingly good writer, and brings all her elegance and poise as a novelist to the story of her own life

  Guardian

• Leaves the reader feeling breathless, grateful and fully alive. Maggie O’Farrell is a miracle in every sense. I will never forget this book

  Ann Patchett

• [An] extraordinary memoir… uncomfortable and compelling… fluent, poised, packed with colourful details

  Observer

• A mystical howl, a thrumming, piercing reminder of how very closely we all exist alongside what could have happened, but didn’t

  New York Times Book Review

• It’s a prayer for perspective that reminds readers to see every dodged bullet as the gift of new life and a reminder not to sweat the small stuff

  Daily Mail

• A profoundly affecting, powerful and life-affirming book. If you only read one memoir this year, make it O’Farrell’s

  Sunday Express

• O’Farrell has a compelling and arresting writing style that fills in a scene quickly and engagingly, to great dramatic and narrative effect

  New Statesman

• Exceptionally accomplished and emotionally sophisticated

  Scotsman

• One of the most life affirming reads of the summer

  Irish Independent

• I can count on one hand the books that made me cry, and still have two fingers spare. I Am, I Am, I Am is one of them

  Irish Times

• O’Farrell’s emotional acuity makes it a powerful account of a determined and thoughtful life. Her fiction is always a masterclass in empathy and the same is true of I Am, I Am, I Am which lingers even longer in the memory for being drawn from real life.

  Daily Express

• A remarkable and life-affirming autobiography

  Good Housekeeping

• I have never read a book about death that has made me feel so alive. Beautifully observed, exquisitely written, Maggie’s memoir is a heart-stopping, addictive read. She has raised the bar on memoir to a height few others will reach

  Tracy Chevalier

• A beautiful, strangely reassuring read

  The i

• I AM, I AM, I AM is a gripping and glorious investigation of death that leaves the reader feeling breathless, grateful, and fully alive. Maggie O’Farrell is a miracle in every sense. I will never forget this book

  Ann Patchett

• A remarkable book

  Scotsman

• It’s a memoir replete with courage, heartbreak and optimism: the most life-affirming book of the year

  Sunday Express

• A mesmerising read

  The Sunday Times

• I have never read a book about death that has made me feel so alive. A heart-stopping, addictive read

  Tracy Chevalier