BookLife Review by Carol O’Day: The Measure (Nikki Erlick, author)
Contemporary fiction, longevity, family secrets, existentialism, magical realism, romance, LBGTQ+ characters, discrimination, support groups.
BookLife Review by Carol O’Day: The Measure (Nikki Erlick, author)
Unnerving and thought-provoking, The Measure transforms a pair of philosophical questions into a quasi-futuristic, dilemma-filled drama: if you could know how long you will live, would you want to know, and what would you do with that information? Author Nikki Erlick creates a contemporary universe with one improbably, sci-fi twist. On a single spring day, all around the world, every living human over the age of 22 receives a box inscribed on its top with the statement “The measure of your life lies within.” Inside each box is a simple string. The lengths of the strings vary. Ultimately we learn that the length of the string corresponds with the length of the box recipient’s life. Some open the box. Some decline to look. Couples are thrown into crisis when one receives a short string. Individuals spiral into depression or rage when they receive short strings.
As fear percolates, discrimination emerges. Short string holders are barred from holding certain positions, including active duty military roles, hospitals are flooded by short-stringers demanding diagnoses to ward off foreshortened lives. The mother of a long-string child with a terminal kidney disease worries not; her child will live a long life, a transplant will come. Holders of short strings quit jobs. Single people with long strings avoid relationships with someone who has a short string. One long-string holding politician demands that civil servants or other candidates disclose their string status.
Erlick wraps the stories of eight characters within this gut-wrenching circumstance. Nina and Maura learn that Nina has a long string and Maura’s is short. Nina’s sister Amie declines to open her box. Hank is a young, compassionate ER doctor with a short string. Ben is a single architect and an only child and cannot break his parents’ hearts with the news. Jack is a young military academy student from a famous political family, who doesn’t really want to be in the military; he holds a long string. His roommate, Javier, is from a family of limited means who is eager to serve in the active military but holds a short string. Anthony is Jack’s uncle and is running for President; he and his wife hold long strings.
The lives of these eight characters each proceed on their own tracks, but Erlick masterfully weaves them into a fabric that seamlessly fashion a single drama unfolds. Several of the characters meet in short string support groups; others’ lives collide in serendipitous ways. There are twists that cause the reader to gasp or slowly say “Oh!” or “oh noooo!” I will not reveal those twists here, as they should be freshly encountered by the reader.
At the conclusion of the book, questions abound. If this scenario were somehow reality, would I open my box? Would I want to know not only how long I might live but even the month in which I would die? Does the answer to that question differ if I am in a relationship? Would I tell my parents? My friends? My children? Would I change how I spend my days? My money? What does that say about the life I am leading now?
Medical science may not be far away from answering questions about our longevity, our health or our likelihood or even the certitude of developing certain health conditions or diseases. How far down that road do we want to go? If the advancement of these sciences is inevitable, perhaps the more important questions are what will we do with this information, and will we, or how will we conduct ourselves with compassion? Can we form a just society when we are possessed with this information? Our nation’s history with race relations and our experiences with learning differences, LBGTQ+, differently-abled people, and the chronically ill do not bode well as predictors, but perhaps we can surprise ourselves and do better.
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