4.5 Stars

”THE CONSULTANT STAMPS down the wheel lock of Karin’s hospital bed. In a loud voice he addresses the intensive care nurses, who are cutting open her tank top and sports bra: Pregnant woman, week thirty-three, child reportedly in good health, started feeling ill about five days ago with flu-like symptoms, fever, cough, slight shortness of breath yesterday which was put down to her pregnancy, condition severely deteriorating today, acute respiratory difficulties, arrived at the maternity unit about an hour ago. With powerful hands, he unscrews a cartridge-like bottle and continues: sats about seventy ambient but response to oxygen with higher saturation, RR about forty to fifty, BT a hundred a forty, HR a hundred and twenty. The midwife who helped with the oxygen in the ambulance stops in the doorway. She gently takes my arm. You’re in Ward B at the ICU now, would you like me to write that down for you on a bit of paper?”

Tom goes from sharing his life with his soul-mate, looking forward to the birth of their child, and their marriage in the relatively near future to being a parent and losing his partner, the woman he thought would be his wife. How life can change so swiftly from that to being a new parent, a single parent, grieving the loss of one while trying to share love with his new daughter, Livia.

This story, a story of love, and loss, of learning how to live again, and in a way, it is also about learning how to love even through the pain, how to slowly engage with life again. Learning how to hope, and maybe even believe that life will not break your heart, again.

The style of the writing is more a stream-of-consciousness fashion – in long, run-on sentences that fade away into another thought or perhaps of someone else speaking, or a memory to drag you down another path until reality interrupts, and you find yourself standing there wondering why you are where you are – and yet, it flows in that way naturally, meandering here and there without losing the reader.

Heartbreakingly beautiful, a lovely testament to the author’s own personal story, which this novel is based upon. A story of a Swedish poet’s internal battle to come to terms with losing his loved one, Karin, to a disease they’d diagnosed after only a short time at the hospital, leukemia. Her death, the birth of a daughter, and the loss of his father that follows too soon. There are autobiographical elements to this novel, and there is so much of this that feels real, and your heart and mind are linked to this person’s story, and it is that link with everything that shows who he is – his thoughts, his fears, and failures – that makes this so worth reading.

This novel, his first, was originally published in Sweden in 2015. Previously, he’d written two books of poetry, ”Sudden Death” in 2007 (a sports oriented book of poetry – he is also a former ice hockey player), and “Fadersmjölken" in 2009.

Recommended



Pub Date: 30 January 2018

Many thanks for the ARC provided by Melville House

***** I give this Book a Five Star Review. I would recommend this Book. Thanks NetGalley.

I was so excited to read this book and I must say, it was beautifully written. Apparently, Tom Malmquist is an award-winning Swedish poet, and it shows. The level of detail that goes into describing a situation or setting in the book is extremely thorough. But, that said, I was a bit bogged down by all the medical details that I didn’t quite understand and I found myself getting lost and having to flip back several pages to discover when something happened that I must have missed as I read along.

But this book has so many amazing reviews, I must be missing something? Is it my cold-heartedness striking again? Because I don’t think I even felt slightly verklempt while I read the book. Sure, it’s a sad story and it’s a true story, which makes it that much more heart-wrenching. But I didn’t get to fully experience that since I kept getting lost in the prose. I just didn’t feel the feelings.

It’s possible that a lot was lost in translation. Or perhaps I missed other nuances or details that are more of a cultural norm in Sweden that don’t relate to life in the U.S. I’m not sure. So, all in all, I was slightly disappointed but I did finish the book and found hope in the end. I’d love to read the book in its original form, but sadly I don’t think that will be possible.

Three and a half stars.

Malmquist's fictionalized story of becoming a young widower with an infant is tragic and searing. The first third of the book has an immediacy that pulls the reader into the chaos, fear and helplessness of the hospital. The remainder of the book shifts between different time periods - sometimes a window into his life as a single dad while other portions are flashbacks to his life with his partner Karin. It may have been a printing issue unique to the ARC, but there were absolutely no chapters in this book and rarely any extra spacing or breaks between sections. This made reading the book choppy and confusing; I often had to reread several paragraphs after figuring out where and when the story had shifted to. I was left wanting to know a little more about Karin, but there is an honesty and openness to Malmquist's own experiences. Mostly I wanted an author's note to explain the background of the story a bit more - while it is a fictional book it is supposedly based very closely on his own life, and the protagonist even shares his name. I have read many memoirs where authors change names, condense timelines, and create composite characters -this book reads like that type of memoir but perhaps the story is more fictionalized than that - I am frustrated not to know where the line between fiction and non-fiction is on this book. Still, there this is a compelling and heartfelt read.

Although, this book is well written and poetry at moments it’s still a cliche’. I’ve read this same story line too many times and here I do don’t receive any new insight or development. I understand it’s non fiction so someone is basically telling their story so on that I say Bravo.

This book was heartbreakingly beautiful. What an amazing story of a man, his daughter and the love of his life.

4.5 stars.

The intensity begins on the first page and continues with the fear and uncertainty over what was happening in this critical emergency situation. Tom's pregnant partner, Karin is extremely ill and is shortly diagnosed with acute leukemia. Anyone who’s ever been through such a time in the emergency setting knows the difficulty of handling their visceral reactions while trying to understand and absorb the details of what the doctor are telling you. Tom Malmquist depicts this perfectly because he knows first hand. It's described as a novel but if you've read anything about the book or this writer you know that what happens in the novel happened in his life. He writes of a poet named Tom experiencing this awful heartbreak.

The story sometimes feels like it's told in a matter of fact way and I expected it to be more lyrical given that he is a poet but as I continued reading, there were so many moments that made me feel as if I were reading one long poem. It took me a while to get used to the writing - strings of sentences, no quotation marks with some paragraph breaks , moving from present to past and back again. The closeness shared by Tom and Karin is reflected in flashbacks and then we are back to the present moment, and the immediacy of preparing for her funeral, caring for a newborn baby, his father’s critical illness, the red tape of registering Livia as his daughter, since he and Karin were not married, although together for 10 years. Reminiscing with his father about when he was a young boy is also especially moving.

It was the title that drew me in and then as I continued reading, I thought about what it might mean in the context of the story which deals with death, the uncertainty of life, the heartbreak and loss, then the experience of knowing as trite as it sounds that life does go on - in fundamentally different ways , but it does go on . I couldn't help but want to separate the truth from the fiction, wondering what things here really happened, what things here did they really say . But in the end it didn’t matter to me; what mattered was how this is the story of a man who loves and grieves his losses then fiercely loves the part of his life he is given along with his loss , a reason to live - his daughter.

I owe thanks to my Goodreads friend , Rebecca . If I hadn’t read her review I would have missed this book. You should read her fantastic and thoughtful review on Goodreads and Book Bag : https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1879248872?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1


I received an advanced copy of this book from Melville House through Edelweiss and NetGalley.

The first third of this book was heart-wrenching. The rest was good but didn't have the same level of emotion and as hard to follow at times due to the formatting and the jumping between memories and the present without clear transitions, which will hopefully be fixed by the time this is released.

For some reason I was unable to download this to my kindle so I can not actually give it a review yet. But it is on my TBR pile

Sweet, heartbreaking, and inspiring. A bit hard to read, but overall a good book.