Chosen by El País as one of this past decade's nine best novels about life and death
The prize-winning, bestselling tale of love, loss, family and the lives we live moment by moment, from a stunning new voice in European fiction.
Tom's heavily pregnant girlfriend Karin is rushed to hospital with severe flu. While the doctors are able to save the baby, they are helpless in the face of what transpires to be acute Leukemia, and in a moment as fleeting as it is cruel Tom gains a daughter but loses his soul-mate. In Every Moment is the story of a year that changes everything, as Tom must reconcile the fury of bereavement with the overwhelming responsibility of raising his daughter, Livia, alone.
By turns tragic and redemptive, meditative and breathless, achingly poignant and darkly funny, this heavily autobiographical novel has been described in its native Sweden as 'hypnotic', 'impossible to resist' and 'one of the most powerful books about grief ever written'.
It is not only admiration, but also wonder, I feel about Malmquist's way to face the grief with linguistic energy, to never lapsing into an already frayed image of death, love and longing - instead writing through, both death and love - but in its own way. The process of writing is a deeply personal struggle, a life struggle.
