I Am, I Am, I Am

 I Am, I Am, I Am is such a fascinating concept for a memoir: Maggie O'Farrell takes seventeen episodes from her life, seventeen 'brushes with death,' and weaves around each of them mediations on male violence,  adolescent risk-taking, parental love, travel, fate and chance, health and illness, caring, home and family, decision making, and many other topics. Her life-threatening events vary from an unwitting encounter with a serial killer to a childhood rush across a busy street, a very serious bout of meningitis to a bumpy plane ride, and includes no less than three incidents of near-drownings.

Inevitably the reader instantly begins to think back over their own near-misses. In my case they would probably include a drunken swim across the Yarra River, a dumb decision to get in a car with someone who certainly shouldn't have been driving, and abdominal adhesions that required urgent surgery. Some things beyond my control, but definitely some stupid decisions in there too.

The most moving chapter of I Am, I Am, I Am talked about O'Farrell's history of multiple miscarriages. It's not often a book makes me cry, but this chapter was so poignant and sad and beautiful; it's worth getting hold of this memoir for that chapter alone.

In the midst of a pandemic (no, it's not over yet, people), reading about the fragility and sheer chanciness of life was more painfully relevant than ever. It was also the second book in a week of reading to discuss procipioception ie the awareness of the body's position in space, a sense impaired in O'Farrell as a legacy of her childhood meningitis, and which contributed to at least one near-drowning. (The Science of Yoga also talked about procipioception -- which is excruciatingly hard to spell, by the way.) A really thought-provoking and insightful book.