I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes With Death (named after a twice-repeated line in Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar) is the new memoir by Maggie O’Farrell, recounting her life through 17 near-death experiences. Although death is integral to the novel and included in the title, her first autobiographical work is above all a meditation on "the life lived around these moments".

O’Farrell spoke to Cathy Rentzenbrink about her initial reluctance to publish an autobiography, saying she always felt "wedded to fiction" and did not want to expose details of the lives of loved ones. But it was a book that she felt she needed to write to reassure her daughter, who has a life-threatening illness, that she was not alone. She told of her decision to write the memoir in a relatively non-linear fashion, comprising 17 non-chronological essays, each one documenting a 'snapshot' incident in which O’Farrell almost died.

One of these incidents happened in childhood, when she was hospitalised aged eight due to a rare virus that sparked long-term neurological problems. O’Farrell read aloud the chapter that evocatively describes this time of her life – explaining that "when you are a child, no-one tells you that you are going to die". She recounted how it has fed into and shaped her writing; as a child who missed two years of school, so reading books was a central part of re-educating herself. Although she recounted how people have questioned how being ill has infiltrated her writing and ability to recall and articulate events, "Ultimately," O’Farrell said, "the illness is me and I am the illness. We are the same thing".

If you enjoyed this, you might like event 244, Rikke Schmidt Kjaergaard and Bill Bryson on Wednesday 30 May at 5.30pm.