3.11.2018 - In Every Moment We Are Still Alive

Thanks to NetGalley, Melville House and Tom Malmquist for the opportunity to read and review this book.

This is a fictionalized autobiographical novel telling the story of Tom as he struggles with the grief of losing his partner.  Karin is pregnant with their child when she is rushed to the doctor with breathing issues.  Thinking it was pneumonia, Tom was shocked when they discovered she had leukemia.  After an emergency C-section, Livia is born but Karin succumbs to her disease.  This book tells of the time afterwards as Tom alternately struggles with his grief while trying to figure out how to be a single dad to Livia.

While the writing is beautiful which is no surprise seeing as Tom is a poet, I struggled mightily with the formatting of the writing in this book.  There are no quotation marks to delineate who is talking to whom with long paragraphs with no breaks in conversation or sometimes even time period.  The book goes back over the start of Tom and Karin's relationship as well as showing how Tom is dealing with his new life. 

I thought all along it was a memoir and was surprised to see it classified as a fictionalized autobiographical novel - was also confused as to why it wasn't written as a memoir.