Synopsis
A New York Times Notable Book
A hypnotic, spellbinding novel set in Greece and Africa, where a young Liberian woman reckons with a haunted past.
On a remote island in the Aegean, Jacqueline is living alone in a cave accessible only at low tide. With nothing to protect her from the elements, and with the fabric between herself and the world around her increasingly frayed, she is permeated by sensory experiences of remarkable intensity: the need for shade in the relentless heat of the sun-baked island; hunger and the occasional bliss of release from it; the exquisite pleasure of diving into the sea. The pressing physical realities of the moment provide a deeper relief: the euphoric obliteration of memory and, with it, the unspeakable violence she has seen and from which she has miraculously escaped.
Slowly, irrepressibly, images from a life before this violence begin to resurface: the view across lush gardens to a different sea; a gold Rolex glinting on her father’s wrist; a glass of gin in her mother’s best crystal; an adoring younger sister; a family, in the moment before their fortunes were irrevocably changed. Jacqueline must find the strength to contend with what she has survived or tip forward into full-blown madness.
Visceral and gripping, extraordinary in its depiction of physical and spiritual hungers, Alexander Maksik’sA Marker to Measure Drift is a novel about ruin and faith, barbarism and love, and the devastating memories that contain the power both to destroy us and to redeem us.
Review
A mesmerising novel about a woman pushed to the limits of human experience. Maksik combines James Salter's gift for seductive sentences with a real mastery of character and story. A beautiful, tender piece of literature which just happens to be a page-turner too (Jonathan Lee)
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, author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk)
Gorgeously written, tightly wound, with language as precise as cut glass, Alexander Maksik's A Marker to Measure Drift is a tour de force. Maksik renders the soul of his heroine, a Liberian refugee, with stark honesty so that we understand both the brutality of what she has run from and the terror she experiences as she tries to build her life back. 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)
A Marker to Measure Drift 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, author of Her Last Death and She Matters)
A moving, deeply felt and lyrical novel about past and present (Kirkus Reviews)
An excellent novel. Each sentence feels intensely crafted, hitting the right tone in what seems like the most concise way possible . . . This book captured me immediately . . . I expected to like A Marker to Measure Drift, but never thought I would become as emotionally involved as I did (Newbooks Magazine)
Alexander Maksik's second novel portrays a young Liberian woman named Jacqueline who . . . astonishes, soothes, and horrifies us with perfect efficiency, making A Marker to Measure Drift a masterpiece (Buenos Aires Review)
A haunting, poignant novel told in beautifully lyrical prose (Image)
Maksik hits the mark. His writing is both stark and lyrical, subtly reflecting Jacqueline's state of mind - wary, desolate, hallucinatory, determined. Maksik's last ten pages, a masterclass in how to captivate and revolt a reader, may well be the most powerful I will read all year (Malcolm Forbes, Literary Review)
Alexander Maksik's first novel You Deserve Nothing received rave reviews and it looks as though this, his second, is going to be as successful. We wander around the beaches with Jacqueline, listening to her thoughts and the internal dialogue with her mother without knowing an awful lot about either of them . . . By the end of the book we know everything in one of the biggest impacting narratives I've ever read. He writes lilting prose, almost demanding to be read aloud (Bookbag)
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