A Marker to Measure Drift - Softcover

Maksik, Alexander

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0345803868 ISBN 13: 9780345803863

Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group, 2014

Synopsis

A New York Times Notable Book

In the aftermath of Charles Taylor's fallen regime, a young Liberian woman named Jacqueline has fled to the Aegean island of Santorini. She lives in a cave accessible only at low tide. During the day, she offers massages to tourists, battling her hunger one or two euros at a time. Her pressing physical needs provide a deeper relief, obliterating her memories of unspeakable violence.
But slowly, the specters of her former life resurface: her adoring younger sister; her unshakably proper mother; her father, who believed in his president; her journalist lover, who knew that Taylor would be overthrown. Now Jacqueline must face the ghosts that haunt her--or tip into full-blown madness. Hypnotic in its depiction of physical and spiritual hungers, this is a novel about ruin, faith, and the devastating memories can destroy and redeem us.

About this title

Review

"Immensely powerful. . . . Beautifully written. . . . Jacqueline is a mesmerizing heroine." --The Boston Globe

"Haunting and sensual, Maksik's prose deftly intertwines the tenderness and torment of memory with the hard reality of searching for sustenance and shelter." --Harper's

"Beautiful. . . . It will leave you breathless and speechless; it will send you reeling." --San Francisco Chronicle

"No novel I read this year affected me more powerfully than Alexander Maksik's A Marker to Measure Drift." --Richard Russo

"Maksik's lean, affecting prose burns . . . stripped of any excess, entirely attuned to the prospect of survival, beautifying the simple things that sustain life." --The Atlantic

"Beautiful. . . . Compelling and visceral. . . . One rushes until the fever breaks, dazed and haunted by its power." --Chicago Tribune (Editor's Choice)

"A bold book, and an instructive one. . . . [Maksik] has illuminated for us, with force and art, an all too common species of suffering." --Norman Rush, The New York Times Book Review

"A Marker to Measure Drift is a haunting, haunted novel. Things get stripped down to essentials--food, water, where to sleep for the night, a state of solitary desperation brought on by the most profound kind of loss. Every line of this excellent novel rings true as Maksik leads us toward the catastrophe at the story's core. This is one of those books that leaves you staring into space when you finish, dazed from the sheer power of what's been said." --Ben Fountain

"Beautifully written. . . . Through an impressionistic stream of consciousness, Maksik slowly reveals Jacqueline's ordeal. . . . A novel that measures the ripple effect of trauma and violence." --The Daily Beast

"A work of stupendeous imagination. . . . [A] truly breathtaking accomplishment." --Ayelet Waldman

"Gorgeously written, tightly wound, with language as precise as cut glass. . . . I was undone by this novel. I challenge anyone to read it and not come away profoundly changed." --Marisa Silver, author of Mary Coin and The God of War

"This novel is spellbinding. In its tenderness, grandeur and austerity, it reminds us that there is no country on earth as foreign, as unreachable, as the frantic soul of another human being." --Susanna Sonnenberg

"Arresting. . . . Here is a human, detached from humanity, in pain and need. The world swirls around, the past lingers, but this human is at the center, small and yet deep. Maksik's prose brilliantly delivers--I think he has fully realized what this story could be, and has told it in the best way possible. An amazing accomplishment." --Lydia Netzer, author of Shine Shine Shine

"A moving, deeply felt and lyrical novel about past and present." --Kirkus Reviews (starred)

"A vivid depiction of disillusionment, shock, and resilience. . . . Sheds light on a setting great in both its beauty and violence. . . . An exploration of terrible brutality and the effort it takes to survive." --Library Journal

"Gorgeous and evocative." --Publishers Weekly

Book Description

An electrifying novel that tracks a woman's journey from the horrors of Charles Taylor's Liberia to abject poverty and self-exile on a Greek island.

About this edition

• Publisher: Knopf Publishing Group
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0345803868
• ISBN 13: 9780345803863
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240