THE MEASURE, by Nikki Erlick
We’re all going to die. Most of us don’t know when. But what if we? did know? What if we could hear the year, the month, and even the day? How would that change our lives?
These questions drive Nikki Erlick’s debut novel The Measure, which weighs in on Emerson’s assertion that “it is not the length of life, but the depth of life” that matters.
One morning, adults all over the world find a box with their name on their doorsteps (or outside their tent, or next to their shelter). Inside is a string whose length, it turns out, represents their longevity. Short strings, long strings, medium strings – every person over 21 receives one, delivered in strange containers that appear out of nowhere. As the weeks go by and the data is collected, scientists state that the strings are accurate at predicting how long their receivers will live. Some people choose to watch their strings; others throw the unopened boxes off bridges and prefer not to know how much time they have left.
Where do the boxes come from? Why can’t anyone see them being delivered? Why were they sent in the first place? Erlick is less interested in technical details than in the impact of the strings on her characters. Hank, an emergency room doctor whose life is spent dealing with other people’s deaths, must face his own. In a romance where one string is much shorter than the other, Nina and Maura argue about getting married and having children. Aimless young Jack finds direction when his uncle, a ruthlessly ambitious presidential candidate, starts spewing inflammatory rhetoric against those with short strings. Two strangers, who happen to be pen pals, forge an intimacy that will have huge consequences. Prejudice against people in shorts is gaining momentum – their desperation is considered dangerous – as Jack’s uncle and other politicians take advantage of the long/short divide, and a weekly support group for people in shorts becomes a makeshift family.
“The Measure” gives us the perspectives of different characters, shifting points of view in a solid, staccato clip. Many chapters are only a page or two long. The most intriguing storyline is of Amie and Ben, strangers who begin to leave each other anonymous letters in the classroom where she teaches during the day and he attends a short support group in the evening. Their tender, thoughtful notes provide a welcome counterpoint to the novel’s fast pace.
Recent American fiction abounds in dystopian explorations of real-life horrors: racial violence (Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah’s “Friday Black”), toxic patriarchy (Jessamine Chan’s “The School for Good Mothers”) and climate catastrophe (Omar El Akkad’s “American War”), to name a few. The Measure, on the other hand, remains firmly in the comfort of the imaginary. Although set in an otherwise familiar modern-day America, the strings actually become the nothing but problem, overshadowing socio-political issues to such an extent that String World, well, isn’t starting to look so bad. Erlick writes, “In any case, the future they had been given looked more promising than the one on the stage for Amie, in which women’s bodies were only stripped of their reproductive capacities and children murdered each other on television at the behest of the government.” She continues, “If those were the alternatives, Amie thought, maybe they should be lucky to have just the strings.”
With Roe v. Wade now overthrown, and kids with semi-automatic guns killing other kids en masse, readers of “The Measure” to be live on the shelves in the future. Despite its chilling premise, Erlick’s novel is an escape from—rather than a window into—our own terrifying reality.
Leni Zumas’ latest book is ‘Red Clocks’.
THE MEASURE, by Nikki Erlick | 368 pages | William Morrow & Company | $28.99
