In every moment we are still alive by Tom Malmquist

This had me gripped from the very first line. A woman has been admitted to to an Intensive Care Unit with breathing difficulties, and to complicate matters, she is thirty three weeks pregnant and her condition is deteriorating rapidly.

What follows is a detailed account of all the tests and treatments the doctors carry out on Karin to try and establish what is happening. Her partner Tom is also present and the book is written entirely from his point of view. This is not the first time that Karin has been seriously ill, but none of her symptoms seem to be related to her past medical history, and just a few hours earlier she had nothing more serious than flu-like symptoms and a bit of a cough.

I am always fascinated by anything related to medicine and I was impressed by the level of detail that the author managed to get into the narrative without making it seem like pages ripped from a medical textbook. The tension is so real that it felt as though harm would come to Karin if I stopped reading and there are no dull sections that I wanted to skim through.

The book is set in Sweden and author Tom Malmquist is a Swedish poet, so this is a translation, but everything flows well and none of the impact has been lost. The book has become an International Best Seller and the intention is to remind us that every day is precious as your whole life can change in a heartbeat. This one is certainly worth reading but probably best to leave it for a while if you have a baby on the way.

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