A Marker to Measure Drift

by Alexander Maksik

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’s A 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. 

Genres: Fiction, Africa, Greece, Literary Fiction, Liberia, Novels, Adult

240 pages, Hardcover

First published July 30, 2013

About the author

Alexander Maksik is the author of four novels: You Deserve Nothing, a New York Times and IndieBound bestseller; A Marker to Measure Drift, which was a New York Times Notable Book, as well as a finalist for the William Saroyan Prize and Le Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger; Shelter in Place, named one of the best books of the year by the Guardian and the San Francisco Chronicle and The Long Corner, which will be published in 2022.

Maksik’s writing has appeared in many publications including Harper’s, The New Yorker, Tin House, Best American Nonrequired Reading, Sewanee Review, Harvard Review, New York Times Book Review, Condé Nast Traveler (where for several years he was a contributing editor) and The Atlantic, and has been translated into more than a dozen languages.

He is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize and the Andrew Lytle Prize, as well as fellowships from the Truman Capote Literary Trust and the Corporation of Yaddo.

Along with French novelist Colombe Schneck, he is the co-artistic director of the Can Cab Literary Residence in Catalonia, Spain.

Reviews

[Antigone · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jacqueline is in flight. As part of the Liberian upper class, she has been forced to flee her country as its dictatorship collapsed into smoke and bone, violence and anarchy. She's washed up on the shore of a touristed Aegean island with no money, no shelter, no plan, and no one to call for assistance. You might think these would be her most immediate concerns, but they are not. Jacqueline's external straits pale in comparison to her dire internal landscape. Her body is not all that's taken flight. Her psyche is also on the run.

A Marker to Measure Drift is an exceedingly well-crafted portrayal of catastrophic traumatic shock. Most characters in stories like this, despite their desperate circumstances, bring with them an identity - a history, memories, connectivity, capacity, perspective; a solid and impactful individual nature. Jacqueline does not. She is no longer intact. She has suffered what amounts to a severe moral injury, the particulars of which we cannot know due to Jacqueline's inability to face them.

Those familiar with traumatic shock will recognize the primitive state to which Jacqueline has been reduced. The ultimate need to locate a place of safety. The subconscious drive to create and enforce a routine; to build the experience of structure. The loss of time-sense that comes with the prohibition of memory; past, present and future now nebulous theoretical states that blend against the will into a maddening temporal chiaroscuro. The fragmentation, the disconnection, the triggering events - the manner in which the traumatic act snatches into consciousness; brutally and without enough context, without its housing among banalities, among normalcies, inside the fuller experience of life. And the exhaustion of such psychic confrontation. That dismal sense of not being able to bring one's "self" into the mix, just a construct, an idea of a human - like a crayon coloring in a tomorrow or two. It's all here. Alexander Maksik provides this and a great deal more.

Many reviewers mention the artistry of the prose, yet I think it's important to call attention to the reality that words, when used to their best advantage, act as a transom for truth. They open the way and then fall back like shadows behind a more substantial artistic offering. Maksik's style is spare and effective and succeeds in provoking recognition. It's less a wisdom to quote than it is a simpatico to grasp onto, to nod with, to level against and equate. (He had less difficulty doing it, clearly, than I have had explaining it.)

Also, this work contains so much specificity and fundamental knowledge of emotional distress that it presents me with a rare opportunity to draw certain distinctions. A lot of reviewers are referring to Jacqueline's condition as post-traumatic stress disorder, which it is not. This is traumatic shock. It may turn into a disorder, but it has not yet. What we are watching as we follow Jacqueline's journey is her mind's attempt to heal itself, to surmount its injury, to re-set and re-balance and recover. Recalling the brutal experience she endured, confronting it in full, and accepting it as true and real and past, will achieve that goal. This is her road; a road put beneath her feet by a truly fine piece of writing.

[switterbug (Betsey) · Rating 2 out of 5]

I was compelled by Maksik's debut novel, YOU DESERVE NOTHING, and eagerly anticipated more from this author. In this, Maksik's second novel, I was bewitched once again by his delicate prose--his ability to spin words, connecting them like fine silver filaments, into whirls of poetic images. I like to linger on Maksik's beautiful passages, such as:

"There were the patchwork farms and vineyards sloping gently to the white frothing coastline. There was the church, pink as bloodied water, and beyond that the cliff edge and the caldera below. She looked down over the town, the buildings like white teeth piled at the very edge of the cliff, at the very end of the island. White teeth and beads of glass."

The problem with the story is that it was manipulative and pandering. I am not insensitive to Charles Taylor's war crimes in Liberia. As a matter of fact, my in-laws were on assignment there in 1989, and my husband and I were frightened when there was no word from them when the civil war broke out. This was the days before smart phones and home computers, and communication was spotty. Fortunately, they got out just in time, and since then, I have done some research on Taylor and have read the excellent novel, DARLING, by Russell Banks, about Taylor's reign in Liberia.

Maksik constructed a melodramatic soap opera, replete with a canned and histrionic climax that was so assuming and ham-handed that I closed the book in anger. Certainly Maksik was maneuvering for revulsion-cum-compassion, but mine was against the artifice of the narrative more than the graphic and harrowing events. Where was the nuance that had followed protagonist Jacqueline across the Greek island of Thera? Moreover, it seems that Maksik depended wholly on his theatrical ending in order to shock the reader and create applause. Shock, awe, and appalling war crimes are supposed to coerce the reader into lauding this book.

I felt sermonized--as if it would be foul for me to criticize this novel. However, the ploys were clichéd and glaring, such as the voice of her mother, a machination that became tedious and saccharine. And Jacqueline's pregnant sister was installed in the story in order to use her to full graphic contrivance. I knew that Maksik would use the tip of his pen to plunge right through that one.

On the upside, the narrative leading up to the denouement was lyrical and silken, but the story became static after 100 or so pages of teasing the reader about Jacqueline's past without "revealing" it. It was too coy, yet transparent. The present storyline was Jacqueline's starvation, which was a morsel he trotted out and protracted until I was weary and warily bloated with boredom. He was waiting to give us the sucker punch that would make us aghast. And wouldn't we be unfeeling monsters if we didn't embrace this book?

I don't appreciate crude, conspicuous attempts to mold me into antipathy. For that, I can see a horror film. So despite his poetic prose, my rancor is for the author's attempts of manufactured rage. I intended to give it 3 stars for the language, but the more I think about Maksik's exploitation, the less fond I am of his poetry. I will still be in line for his next novel, with the hope that he will dazzle me again instead of trying to handle me.

[Trish · Rating 5 out of 5]

This astonishingly good story by Maksik tests our empathy levels. We live beside a homeless woman on a Greek volcanic island in the Mediterranean. Jacqueline her name is, named after Kennedy’s wife. It is hope, I think, that makes her parents name her this, for how can they know what she will become, how she will look, how she will act?

But Jacqueline lives up to the dignity of her name, living as she does in an ocean cave, or in parks under old cypress trees, or in abandoned buildings overlooking the sea. We walk with her when she buys almonds, or a peach and a tomato. We are with her when she sleeps on concrete that gets cold at night, awaking bruised and aching in the morning. She does not think overmuch, but remembers in puffs, like smoke: the voice of her mother curling around her, smelling strongly of gin and lime but fading off into the air, leaving her bereft with lingering memories.

”Nostalgia, her father said, is from the Greek. Nostros, to return home. Algos, pain.
Nostalgia, her father had once told her at lunch, is homesickness.”

This is the story of Jacqueline, who leaves Liberia during the civil war, who escapes her life but not her memories of that life. There is an almost unbearable tension in this novel, despite the languid, sunny days and lack of action. We recognize something in this lost woman, and in the kindnesses of strangers who see something broken in her that needs tending. We are drawn into this story and we walk the rest of the way on our own volition, much like Jacqueline does, not sure where she is going. It is very powerful writing.

I read this book on the recommendation of Anthony Marra, author of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena, who mentioned this title in an interview. In the Acknowledgements to this book is a nod: “To Anthony Marra, partner in writing what we do not know.” He also credits the journalist Tim Hetherington, among others, for his film: Liberia: An Uncivil War and his book Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold. Helene Cooper’s memoir, The House at Sugar Beach: In Search of a Lost African Childhood was also a reference.

Maksik and Marra have done something that is not advised in writing programs: they write about what they do not know, have not experienced. That both brilliantly succeeded in this puts paid to that advice, with the caveat that the skills required here are extraordinary. Maksik wrote his story in the voice of a young black woman from an African country torn with strife. And he reminds us, just as Sonali Deraniyagala does in her eviscerating memoir Wave, that the way to rediscover ourselves after loss is to remember, not to forget.

It makes me hopeful, this work. The painful, jagged, soul-destroying story of Liberia at war, in the hands of Maksik, reminds us of what is possible when there are people like him holding up mirrors.

[Jill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Right in the very heart of human civilization – Greece – Alexander Maksik places his main character, a woman who has been reduced to the most animalistic instincts for survival.

Named Jacqueline – ironically after the American first lady – she is a victim of PTSD, having witnessed a yet-to-be-revealed catastrophic event that left her the sole survivor of her family. Originally from Liberia, Jacqueline’s father’s fate was twinned with the warlord Charles Taylor as the country dissolved into chaos.

Once elegant and well-educated like her namesake, Jacqueline no longer can “read” people and she slinks, like an animal, in the shadows. Alexander Maksik does not flinch as he describes the torment of hunger, dehydration, mistrust and alienation. Here, for example, he describes how eating displaces memory…

“Already she could feel herself returning. Or memory returning to her. Of her mind. Or whatever it was that came rushing back. Call it memory, she thought. And or a time the act of eating displaced memory. It was like a solid thing in a pool of water and the second you removed it, the water returned it.”

The questions at the core of the book are this: how does a person keep fighting to live after witnessing the most inhuman acts of barbarism? How can a person recollect – and take ownership – of the past when to do so would likely reduce her to madness? And where is the line between recollection and madness drawn?

As we drift with Jacqueline toward the inevitable revelations of what has reduced her to her present state – surviving on sips of water, shunning others, coping with horrific dreams of her mother’s eyes and voice, yearning for emotional and physical shelter – we want to avert our eyes to what is coming. But we can’t.

This is, indeed, a haunting book, a book that will unsettle and daze you, and one that you will not easily shake after you close the last page. It is astonishingly well-written and effective and solidifies this reputation as a writer to watch.

[Superstition Review · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Marker to Measure Drift, a novel by Alexander Maksik, engulfs you in an intimate experience. You delve deep into Jacqueline’s world. Maksik does an outstanding job of placing you in her shoes. You feel her hunger, loneliness, homelessness, discomfort, and restlessness against the backdrop of the beautiful tourist island of Santorini.
As the story progresses, you are exposed to Jacqueline’s other world, a world of memories, an escape from her present reality. Maksik shifts seamlessly from one to the other. Slowly, these memories form into a tragic past. You discover Jacqueline’s family met a tragic end in their home of Liberia after the downfall of its leader Taylor. She is a refugee. While the novel entails her continuously wandering for a place to stay, it also entails her finding the courage to connect with someone and tell her story and accept her past.
A resonating theme is that of pre-destination v. freewill. Her mother taught her to accept God’s will and that everything happens for a reason. Her father taught her to “be practical” and “take stock of her life.” It is interesting to see her reconcile the two concepts. She firmly believes that there is no God or afterlife but that people live on through memories. She recalls telling her sister, “And when you have children and you die, you’ll be left in their memory and that’s the only way there’s God.” Despite her family’s death, they live on through her in this beautifully written novel.
By Claudia Estrada

[Matt Daly · Rating 2 out of 5]

***Book was won in a goodreads first read giveaway***

First off, this was a very ambitious novel. The novel follows a young girl whose connection to reality becomes more and more obscured as you read on. At first, memories of her previous life are slowly filtered in as she struggles to survive on an Aegean island with nothing. As the book progresses, these memories become more and more encompassing as the protagonist tries to keep them subdued and continue on with her life. What we are left with, is a psychological coming-of-age novel.

The problems I had with the book began with the plot. The plot is very meager and entirely transparent. I had to force myself to read on to get some closure from this book. The plot is only advanced through a series of disjointed and downright clumsy flashbacks. The flashbacks, of which, keep pounding the same facts into our heads: The protagonists' mother is a religious alcoholic, her father is a confident Liberian patriot, and her kid sister loves boys. These flashbacks needed some re-tooling to build more suspense or a deeper purpose. The book has several angles it could have taken to give more suspense, and each one was abandoned. At no point are we truly worried about the survival of the young girl, who always finds enough to eat, drink, etc. This could have added a great deal. Also, in an early subplot, the young girl runs into a group of Senegalese men who seemed to have been tracking her to the island. However, the author just dumps this subplot . Potential lost. Finally, since the ending was so predictable, the author decided to go for the gross-out/disturbing grand finale.

Overall, this was an OK effort. Well written, yes, however, I won't let the author off the hook. Not very enjoyable for me.

[Bonnie Brody · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alexander Maksik has written a marvel of a book, one that radiates its pain and horror after you have finished it. ‘A Marker to Measure Drift’ left me breathless and tearful, caring deeply for Jacqueline, the book’s protagonist. It took me a while to really get into it but once I did, I felt like a prisoner to Jacqueline’s anguish and stayed up until three a.m. in order to finish it.

Jacqueline is a Liberian woman, an expat, a political refugee, who is wandering the Greek Isles, currently on Santorini or Thera, as it was once called. As the book opens she is living in a cave that is accessible only at low tide. She has a makeshift mattress, has created shelves from stones and is hiding from herself and any people she might encounter. She hears her dead mother speaking to her and worries how close she is to true madness. “It was becoming more and more difficult to distinguish between what was happening and what had happened. What was memory and what was not.”

Jacqueline is weak from thirst and hunger, barely eking out a living by giving massages to tourists on the beach. She often feels nausea and faintness, most likely caused by her hunger as well as impinging memories of her past that she cannot control. She has a raging case of PTSD and her symptoms range from nightmares, attempting to avoid her memories, trouble sleeping, a sense of distance from everyone, and a sense that she will imminently die. She is angry and scared, moving on from one hidden shelter to the next. Each time she moves on “she was leaving. Again, she was abandoning a place, relinquishing a safe present, for some unsure, unsafe future.” She felt like she had to keep walking as walking kept her memories at bay. To stop might kill her.

“She was alone. There was nothing of them left. Nothing but memory and memory seemed like madness.” As Jacqueline forges forward with no real plan except to move, she calls this logic. She constantly hears her mother’s voice and has conversations with her. Though her mother is dead, she governs a lot that Jacqueline does. Jacqueline is in a twilight state. She “has forgotten herself. Forgotten about money. Then for a long moment she cannot recall where she sleeps at night, where she leaves her things.” Despite doing her best to ward off her memories of what happened in Liberia, she can not and she is besieged by pain and anguish.

Maksik does an astounding job of building up to the climax, of letting the reader knot Jacqueline before unveiling her story and her part in her family’s history. This is a brilliant book, one that threads itself into the reader’s heart and pulls it tightly, so tight that it is uncomfortable and unescapable. This is not for the faint of heart but if you read this, prepare to not be able to put it down. Like me, you’re in for a long night.

[Travis Fortney · Rating 4 out of 5]

My Review from the Chicago Center for Literature and Photography, which you can find here: http://bit.ly/10Al29A

--

In the acknowledgments section of Alexander Maksik's unsettling, stripped-down new novel A Marker to Measure Drift, the first people the author thanks are the makers of two films Liberia: An Uncivil War and Pray the Devil Back to Hell. I haven't seen either movie, but it says something about Mr. Maksik's novel that I read the acknowledgments section after finishing the book, which I don't always do. I suppose I was looking to find some explanation or point of entry into what I had just read.

And the truth is, A Marker to Measure Drift does unfold something like a film. We're introduced to Jacqueline, a young, graceful black woman who is living in a cave on an island in the Aegean Sea. The writing is visual: "In the morning she woke with coarse dark sand blown across her face and piled up against her back in a smooth slope. She gently removed the grains from her lashes and from the corners of her eyes. She rose onto her knees. The sand slid down the back of her neck and caught in the waistband of her skirt." This world is new to Jacqueline. She's lost, alone, and disoriented. She's hungry and thirsty. Her inner monologue mostly consists of conversations with her mother, who isn't there. The line between sane and not sane is a bit blurry, and the question of just how far Jaqueline has tumbled is omnipresent. We get the sense that Jacqueline didn't need to be resourceful in her old life, but now she will learn or die. The spare narrative follows her as she finds food. She watches a family of tourists come to the beach. "Please leave something," she repeats to herself like a mantra. And they do leave her something. She sits in their depressions on the sand, drinks the remains of a water bottle with pieces of garbage floating in it, eats the discarded scraps of a sandwich. In that moment, we can feel Jaqcueline's primal relief. We can feel her pride, pages later, when she earns enough money to buy a gyro by giving massages to tourists on the beach.

Eventually, the narrative is punctuated by shards of memory. The gray cashmere coat her mother sent her for Christmas, the wide green lawns of her English boarding school, "her father's left hand moving across the shining black lacquered top of a grand piano no one could play", "the smell of gin mingling sweetly with her mother's perfume", her pregnant younger sister Saifa, the white teeth of a mysterious bearded man, a "band of lunatic children".

Mr. Maksik uses the simplest of plots, and the sparest methods. We learn that Jacqueline is a refugee from Liberia, and that her father was a Taylor loyalist (as in Charles Taylor, the warlord with the American education who became the country's dictator and rose to international infamy for various crimes against humanity, most notably perhaps the "boy soldiers" that have been dramatized in a number of books and films). "He was an idiot," Jacqueline says of her father when she finally speaks of him, "and a little boy." It soon dawns on the reader that Jacqueline's memories are all trauma--even the happy ones--because they belong to a life that is simply gone, everything in it wiped away by the event that sent her to the beach and cave where we met her. Her personal trauma coincides with Taylor's fall and the end of the Liberian Civil War. And so the the narrative's real movement is toward and away from the moment where her old life came to an end. The resolution will come when Jacqueline gives voice to her traumas and tell us the details of her story.

It all makes for uncomfortable and sometimes gruesome reading, but this is a very effective and contained book. Mr. Maksik has wonderful instincts for delivering just enough insight into Jacqueline's character to keep us turning the pages. He manages to raise the stakes to the highest possible level--her choice is simply to come to terms with her past or die--without blinking. Here is a book where the author doesn't feel the need to dilute the drama with humor, a book where the "big questions" are stripped to their essential core: What is necessary to sustain life? The answers Mr. Maksik leads us to are touching, and the book ends on a hopeful note despite all the blood.

[Mmars · Rating 4 out of 5]

Deserves way more than the 289 GR ratings it currently has!!

Jacqueline is a Liberian war refugee suffering from PTSD attempting to survive on a Greek vacation destination island, a country not her own. She knows noone. She lives the invisibility of homelessness, the desperation of hunger. But her constant struggle is with her mind, its voices, its thoughts, its memories. It is impossible for her to stop it, to control it, to return to a self she once knew.....before her trauma. Because her father worked for the government she was well-educated and is now able to pass as a young American student summering abroad. Her mother's voice is always within her mind - instructing, admonishing, advising, chastising. It is both her nemesis and her friend.

This is an psychologically tough read. The writing is generally tight and terse. About two-thirds of the way through, as she makes her way to the most beautiful city on the island, I felt the repetition of her situation nearly got out of hand and perhaps at this point a few passages could have been removed, but beyond that I do not think anything should have changed. The snippets of flashbacks throughout the book prepare the reader for the inevitable denoument of her traumatizing experience.

Unfortunately PTSD has become a term used almost exclusively regarding veterans and survivors of war. But it is a syndrome that applies to the post-traumatic reactions people sustain from everything from natural disasters, family dysfunction such as abuse and divorce, to job loss and being the victim or observer of crimes such as rape, burglary or murder. This book delivers a riveting look at the interior life of just one of the world's millions who live under society's radar and outside the means of psychological help.

[Writer's Relief · Rating 5 out of 5]

A starkly written, haunting story, A Marker To Measure Drift by Alexander Maksik will have you completely immersed from the first sentence. It tells the deeply affecting story of Jaqueline, a young woman finds herself homeless after the brutal murder of her family during a rebellion in Liberia.
Fleeing to the beaches of Greece, Jaqueline struggles to hold on to her self-respect, integrity, and sanity. She lives day-to-day on found scraps of food, and she offers massages to vacationing beach goers to make a little spare change.. Struggling with the reality of her bleak existence and trying to forget past events, Jaqueline hovers in a lonely, shadowy world that nearly disintegrates into madness.
Small kindnesses from random strangers help Jaqueline regain a semblance of hope, and she slowly and courageously tries to pick up the pieces of her shattered life.Intense and moving, this novel is simply unforgettable.

[Tuck · Rating 3 out of 5]

i loved maksik;s first, You Deserve Nothing and i think telling that his first novel was from Europa Editions while this one here is of knopf. but ntl, this is affecting story of young, educated (her daddy was charles taylor's finance minister) liberian who escapes, too late, to spain, then greece and is living homeless on the beaches. her homelessness and ptsd seemed well sketched, but also the readers knows, KNOWS, the story she will eventually tell, if not to herself, then some some human she can find to talk to. so while there is some suspense, after a while reading, it ebbs away. there was just no where else the story could have gone. or at least this story , as it was written.
but quibble aside maksik is good writer all should read, because of his heart, his research, his lovely way of talking about people and earth, weather, sky, water, other animals. for example there was a cameo of a white dog in this story, just a few pages, but disney coulda made a movie of those few pages.

i forgot to add, that some other books would greatly increase ones appreciation for this maksik novel, an auto bio
And Still Peace Did Not Come: A Memoir of Reconciliation . a western journo/documentarian Long Story Bit by Bit: Liberia Retold. and tim butcher's cool walk through hot place Chasing the Devil: A Journey Through Sub-Saharan Africa in the Footsteps of Graham Greene

[Mark Stevens · Rating 4 out of 5]

"A Marker to Measure Drift" is serene and quiet. The prose is understated and clean. The action is a bit repetitive as we follow Jacqueline, a refugee from Liberia, as she makes her way trying to find sustenance and shelter and civility on a Greek island.

A slow-burning tension pulled me along as Jacqueline's fragile situation seemed like it could shatter completely at any moment. As Jacqueline scores small victories--a real cup of coffee, a job that generates cash--Maksik's writing is so powerful we can taste the hot drink and feel the foot massages that Jacqueline is administering up and down the beach. Jacqueline has internalized her mother's moral compass (and her cautious approach to decision-making) and she desperately misses her sister.

There's tangible foreboding on the page, but the real punch from "A Marker to Measure Drift" isn't what's in Jacqueline's future--it's what's in her past. We are allowed more and more tidbits about the horrific events in Liberia that led up to Jacqueline's flight to Greece, but it's not until the bitter end that Maksik pulls the curtain all the way back (to powerful effect) and we are asked to revisit what we know about Jacqueline and how she has treated others, as well as herself, in a challenging situation. Readers looking for page-turning excitement might be disappointed.

Readers who want to meet an unusual young woman who survived a scene of true horror--and who is now trying to find decency and renew her faith in civilization--might discover a memorable, thoughtful story. "A Marker to Measure Drift" is about the sharp clash today of wealth and poverty, of terrorism and humanity, of hope up against complete, utter dread.

[Sooz · Rating 4 out of 5]

i liked the title so much i pulled it from the library shelf. only a few pages in ..... it has a slow start but that's okay. i'm patient.

if ever there was a literary character that needed a marker to measure drift it would be the narrator of this story. adrift is the perfect word to describe her. almost outside of time and place, she simply exists, alone and completely disconnected ... untethered. the author describes this state of being beautifully, and while he establishes tension in the hints he gives about how she got to this state, the real tension for me was in whether or not she would be saved. would she find her way back to society, to humanity, to the living ... or ... would she be lost to the drift. the days we spend with her describe her tipping point. it could go either way.

it's not overly long which is good. the author /editor stretched out her story just long enough. I hate when there is more book than there is story. AND the title is perfect. just perfect.

[Robert Wechsler · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent example of a disciplined third-person, tight POV narration with little dialogue. Maksik is also sufficiently disciplined not to make the protagonist’s past something that is disclosed like a mystery, to create suspense. And although the story proceeds day by day, with lots of details and repetition (and, less successfully, with memories that are close to flashbacks), it is not essentially a naturalistic novel.

Since almost nothing happens, all the pressure is put on the novel’s aesthetics and, for the most part, this holds up. Only at the end, when the protagonist spills the beans about her family, does the author’s discipline flag. As an editor, I would have recommended that Maksik try a different ending. But all in all the novel works.

It’s interesting that Maksik’s other two novels are first-person with lots of dialogue, and realistic, it appears. And yet this one seems to work best, according to those who've read the others. But perhaps I'm just prejudiced toward this novel's narrative approach.

[Sid Nuncius · Rating 5 out of 5]

I thought this was an excellent book. It's a slow, intimate portrait of Jacqueline, a survivor of the dreadful last days of the Charles Taylor regime in Liberia who has fled and ended up, destitute, on the Greek island of Santorini. There is very little action for much of the book's length; the narrative is concerned almost entirely with Jacqueline's inner state, her response to her new circumstances and the scattered, hinted-at memories of her contented, privileged past and the terrible events which brought her here.

Maksik writes exceptionally well. He has a deceptively gentle, almost lyrical style which captures the place and Jacqueline's internal state very well indeed. He also has a remarkable depth of understanding and an ability to convey Jacqueline's combination of vulnerability and resilience which made this an absolutely riveting read for me. The narrative hints for much of its length at fragments of the full horror of what Jacqueline has experienced and witnessed so there is a building sense of tension which gives the story some real drive. I found the imaginary mental conversations she has with her mother completely convincing. Her responses, too, to events on the island and people she meets are exceptionally well depicted, and I found her a fascinating and beautifully drawn character.

It's not all grimness and horror by any means. Maksik doesn't insult the events or the people he is writing about with facile notions of "closure" or the like, but there is a redemptive and hopeful note in Jacqueline's inner strength and in some of the simple human kindness which she encounters. When the full revelation of the horror comes, it is with a kind of catharsis and the hint of a beginning of healing, and I found it exemplary in expressing dreadful but necessary things in an honest and human way.

I found this book gripping, haunting, moving and deeply thought-provoking and I recommend it very warmly.

[Terry · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was really impressed with this book. Not the normal fair for me, a woman flees Liberia and tries to survive as a homeless person in Greece. It's somber, sad, little plot, but still felt very drawn into the story, the voice, her despair and the dangers she faced. The inner dialogue she has with her mother, the self-questioning and awareness, a possible descent into madness is well done. I think anyone who has lived without a secure home, forced to live by their wits, to navigate the hazards of poverty, will appreciate the story. It's an interesting contrast that the story takes place in Greece, the setting the main character moves through is amazing, beautiful descriptions.

What you get a real sense of in reading this book, is the value you place on things when you're desperate. When you can't afford coffee, having two pots is a tremendous luxury. And then, most poignant of all, when you have no human connections and someone, in this case a waitress, treats you with kindness, offers friendship, it is an amazing event. You are nervous, you are so afraid that your life is such a disaster that no one could possibly be kind or offer friendship, and still they do, and you shake your head in amazement at your good fortune.

The ending left me a bit wanting,otherwise I would have given this book 5 stars. In addition, I read a review on Amazon by a former student of Maksik's that corrupted this beautiful story for me. Still highly recommend it.

[Jaclyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was completely captivated by this book. Jacqueline's desire to eat food, to not focus on the past, and to survive was so engaging, I really could barely put it down. Also, I was reading it while sitting on a beach and all I could think about was how Jacqueline walked on the beach after everyone had left for the day looking for half-empty water bottles. So, on the beach, I noticed half-empty water bottles everywhere.

The story weaves in and out of memory to Jacqueline's present state as homeless on the beaches of Greece and does so seamlessly. It builds and builds to a final memory. I couldn't wait to hear the full story and put the pieces together. Once it was put together I actually teared up and I also couldn't sit down anymore. I had to go for a walk and get a drink.

But once it was over, I felt hollow. Everything was for that one horrific moment? I thought about the story "Child's Play" by Alice Munro, it also dances around one scene that we know is important but don't find out until the end of the story what actually transpired. But for some reason, at the end of that story, I found it satisfying but at the end of this book I was, not disappointed, but hungry for something else, just like Jacqueline on those beaches.

[Chad in the ATL · Rating 4 out of 5]

Right from the start, I have to say that I really enjoyed Alexander Maksik’s atmospheric character story, A Marker to Measure Drift. Told from the first-person perspective of Jacqueline, Maksik shows a deft touch juggling her physical trials with her unreliable mental state. Maksik’s writing is hypnotic and creates an authentic and unique character in Jacqueline. While the narration allows us to get a feel for what has brought Jacqueline to the edge of madness – and arguable over the edge – it isn’t until the very end that we actually confront the full horror of what has wrecked her young life and the immense courage it takes to even attempt to go on, no matter how haltingly.

I was completely absorbed by A Marker to Measure Drift. At 240 pages, it is a perfect length for the story it tells and is written with remarkable ability. I’m not going to call this the best novel I have read this year, but it is certainly one of the better ones. Some readers might have difficulty with the unreliable narrator or the lack of a clean conclusion, but for me, this was one of the best parts. A Marker to Measure Drift is certainly worth putting on your reading list.

[Brianne Sperber · Rating 5 out of 5]

I often disagree with anyone who has ever called a book harrowing. In this instance, this book is harrowing, devastating, moving, and exceptionally powerful. In the advanced reading edition, the editor calls this a tour-de-force. Even that feels like an understatement.

An incredible meditation on solitude and what violence does to our most basic human interactions. Maksik explores what it means to be alone and the impact grieving alone can have on a person. Little happens in the book until part 4, but as the slow build-up takes you into Jacqueline's heart and mind, you see why she kept to herself - both through Maksik's clever writing and through her very limited interactions with other people.

An interesting juxtaposition in the setting: Jacqueline herself is homeless and impoverished in a place where extremely wealthy individuals vacation. Yet, you see little of this other wealth and see immense generosity. When we discover she was once among the wealthy classes and then is forced to literally massage their feet for a small income, the reader is forced to admire her strength. She is graceful, despite the circumstances.

A brilliant novel.

[Meredith · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an excellent book, though the material was so utterly devastating, I have a hard time suggesting that friends read it.

Shelter. Water. And food. Always, food. These are the things that Jacqueline focuses on in order to keep herself from thinking about the horrific situation she has somehow escaped in Charles Taylor's Liberia.

A Marker to Measure Drift puts the reader inside Jacqueline's tortured mind as she fights to keep from tipping head-first into insanity. Homeless and in self-imposed exile on a remote Greek island, her focus is on the purely physical: satisfying her hunger, escaping the heat, finding shelter. But images from her past cannot be avoided, and start to surface both in her waking and dreaming mind.

Alexander Maksik has written a gripping, disturbingly vivid story of coming to terms with a horrifying past and learning to reconnect with society. This is one of those books that will have you in its grasp until the not unexpected, but nevertheless completely devastating finale.

[Paula · Rating 1 out of 5]

I keep hearing about how gentle the authors language is.. ime its just slow. He goes into excruciating detail about pedestrians eating lunch and the toenail polish of the people she is massaging on the beach, but almost completely ignores how she ended up there. I hear there is a blow out ending, but why do I have to sift through excruciating detail to pan for little tiny nuggets about the part thats actually a worthwhile story?. I understand the idea of creating interest with these teasers, the suspense of a story that trickles out a little at a time so the reader can savor them but the author abuses it. He obfuscats the story with so much mundane innatity I dont care anymore if he ever gets to the point.


To intensify my suffering I made the mistake of listening to the audio version. Granted there was little for the narrator to work with, but she's insufferable in her slow moaning pace.

[Iris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This novel has left me raw and aching. Jacqueline's story is devastating and heartbreaking and the fragmented way it is revealed is just right for the pace of the novel and the harshness of the final revelations in the last 10 pages or so. The world she has left behind and is haunted by seeps into focus, slowly and then all at once, and this packs a powerful punch. It is full of melancholic feeling and does not have a fairy tale ending, which is extremely sad but just highlights the truthfulness of the subject matter as life is full of devastation, terror, loss and pain. And it is time we opened our eyes and learnt from books like these that we have the power to destroy but we also have the capability to heal and we should always vow to do the latter and to do good.

[Doug Dosdall · Rating 2 out of 5]

There are parts is this book I really liked which is why I finished it but in the end I was disappointed. The beginning has me expecting a book about the refugee experience and I wanted to hear about that. But there are some odd facts that jar even there (how does Jacqueline land in Spain and end up on a Greece Island is never explained for example and makes no sense). The narrative device of the character taking to her mother in her head wears thin. So much more could have been told about her story but instead we get a rather thin and repetitive story that teases out the back story which isn't really a surprise anyway.

[Karima · Rating 1 out of 5]

Abandoned this book at page 80.

Felt like I was climbing up a craggy, rubble-strewn mountainside. It was painfully obvious that the only reward, when the climb was over, would be a a scene of beyond-belief human cruelty. I chose to reroute.

[Lolly K Dandeneau · Rating 3 out of 5]

One thing that struck my gut from the start was hunger. All the things we take for granted, a roof over one's head, safety, family, and food- my God to be hungry. More to follow soon...

[Rambling Reader · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.75

[Nicole · Rating 3 out of 5]

"Mehr Almosen. Was konnte die Frau in ihrem Gesicht sehen, was Jacqueline in der Toilette selbst nicht gesehen hatte? Sie musste es herausfinden, damit sie es verändern konnte. Es sei denn, es war einfach ihre Hautfarbe und ganz und gar nichts Verstecktes, Geheimnisvolles. War schwarz zu sein auf dieser Insel gleichbedeutend damit, ein Flüchtling zu sein?"

Jacqueline ist eine Gestrandete. Heimatlos, sprachlos. Sie ist 23 Jahre alt und aus ihrem afrikanischen Geburtsland geflohen. Nun kämpft sie an einem griechischen Strand ums Überleben. Tagsüber versucht sie, unter den Touristen nicht aufzufallen, nachts wäscht sie sich im Meer. Sie trägt nur ihre Kleidung und Erinnerungen bei sich. Mehr nicht. Doch über das Erlebte kann sie nicht sprechen. Bis ihr eines Tages eine Griechin Essen anbietet. Jacqueline beginnt zu erzählen – von ihrer Familie, ihrem Land, ihrer Flucht. Und davon, dass Erinnerungen, Erlebnisse und Überleben oft keinen Platz für Hoffnung lassen.

Ich muss ganz ehrlich gestehen, dass ich auf das Buch vielleicht niemals aufmerksam geworden wäre, wenn die liebe Vertreterin auf dem Verlagsabend von Droemer nicht so voller Herzblut von dem Buch erzählt hätte. Das Cover ist zwar hübsch, aber nicht unbedingt ein Hingucker zwischen all den bunten Sommerlektüren, die sich da in den Regalen bereits tummeln. Dennoch ist es passend zur Thematik. Ein Thema, bei dem man auf den ersten Blick vielleicht denkt: „Bitte nicht schon wieder sowas politisches. Über Flüchtlinge höre ich im Fernsehen doch wirklich genug.“ Aber genau so ist es nicht. Was man im Fernsehen hört oder in der Zeitung liest, das sind meistens trockene Berichte darüber, wie schlimm alles für uns ist, weil die Flüchtlinge da sind und immer mehr kommen. Dieses Buch beleuchtet allerdings die Geschichte eines solchen Flüchtlings. Zwar ist es kein biographischer Roman, doch das Schicksal der Protagonistin steht stellvertretend für so viele andere Menschen. Jacqueline ist jünger als ich und musste doch schon so viel mehr durchmachen. Natürlich geht es um schreckliche Dinge, die sie erlebt hat und auch um die Politik, die dahinter steht und den Menschen nicht hilft, aber man bekommt einen vollkommen anderen Einblick. Einen Einblick, der einen zum Grübeln bringt und noch weit über das Buch hinaus Wirkung hat.
Der Leser wird einfach mitten in die Geschichte der Protagonistin geworfen. Sie hat es bereits bis nach Griechenland geschafft. Etwas, das nicht jeder Flüchtling aus Afrika schafft. An einigen Stellen erhält man einen Einblick, wenn sich Jacqueline an die Schiffsfahrt erinnert und wie viele auf dem Weg gestorben sind, immerhin nicht von den Feinden im eigenen Land getötet, aber doch auf der Flucht gestorben ohne je die Freiheit gekannt zu haben. Anfangs empfand ich diese Art und Weise des Erzählens etwas schwierig, weil man sich so viel zusammenreimen musste, doch am Ende ergab alles einen Sinn und fügte sich zusammen und hat für mich auch den Reiz ausgemacht das Buch bis zum Ende zu lesen.
Ein weiterer Punkt am Schreibstil, der es mir etwas schwer gemacht hat, ist der Glaube der Protagonistin und ihre Erinnerungen. An vielen Stellen spricht sie mit ihrer Mutter, als wäre diese noch da und würde wirklich mit ihr reden. Sie erinnert sie immer wieder an Gott zu glauben. Es fiel mir schwer mir das vorzustellen, da ich glaube, dass nach all den schrecklichen Dingen, die dort durchgestanden wurden, der Glaube irgendwann einfach brechen muss. Deshalb ging mir die Mutter irgendwann einfach nur noch auf die Nerven, doch ich denke, dass das wirklich eine sehr subjektive Empfindung ist. Allerdings geriet die Handlung in Griechenland dadurch natürlich immer wieder etwas ins Stocken.
Der Autor ist dafür an die schrecklichen Ereignisse, die seine Protagonistin durchgestanden hat, sehr gefühlvoll herangegangen und findet genau den richtigen Mittelweg zwischen sachlicher Beschreibung und zu großem Abstand von den Ereignissen. Es wirkt zu keinem Zeitpunkt konstruiert oder künstlich dramatisiert. Jacqueline musste schreckliches durchstehen und doch vielleicht nicht alles auf einmal. Oft habe ich bei solchen Geschichten von Leid und Schmerz das Gefühl, dass man zu viel Kummer und Leid in einen Charakter packen wollte, doch in diesem Fall ist alles stimmig. Auch hat die Protagonisten ihre Schwächen und bricht immer wieder unter der Last der Ereignisse zusammen. Sie reagiert menschlich und das ist in einem solchen Roman vielleicht noch wichtiger als sonst.
Mir fehlten in dem Buch eindeutig Kapitel. Es ist schwer in der Handlung zu bleiben, die immer wieder durch die inneren Gespräche mit der Mutter unterbrochen wird, wenn man das Buch zwischendurch weglegen muss. Es gibt einige Große Abschnitte, die eigenständig betitelt sind und dann noch die kleinen Gedankenstriche, die einzelne Zeitpunkte der Geschichte trennen, doch oft fand ich diese Abbrüche an den Punkten eher verwirrend als hilfreich. Ich hätte mir Kapiteleinteilungen gewünscht, doch was das angeht bin ich ja ohnehin etwas eigen.


Mit „Die Gestrandete“ hat sich Alexander Maksik getraut eine Thematik zum Teil seines Romans zu machen, die aktueller nicht sein könnte und die das Potential hat vielen Menschen die Augen für das zu öffnen, was die Flüchtlinge, die täglich in unser Land kommen, alles schon durchgemacht haben. Er beschreibt die Ohnmacht, die Angst, die Hoffnungslosigkeit und auch das Versagen der Staaten und der Menschen, die in ihnen leben. Auf höchst gefühlvolle Art erzählt er das Leiden einer jungen Frau, die nichts mehr besitzt, nicht einmal mehr Hoffnung und die dennoch weiter lebt. Auch wenn ich am Ende nur drei Blumen vergebe, weil ich meine Probleme mit dem Schreibstil hatte, empfehle ich wirklich jedem dieses Buch zu lesen. Es verändert die eigene Sicht auf die Dinge in so vielerlei Hinsicht.

Aussehen: ♥♥♥♥
Spannung: ♥♥♥
Schlüssigkeit: ♥♥♥♥♥
Emotionale Tiefe: ♥♥♥♥♥
Schreibstil: ♥♥♥♥

[Joanne · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book starts off with a good premise; a political refugee from an African country finds herself homeless in Greece. We suffer with her through starvation, lack of shelter and cleanliness issues until someone takes pity on her and she finally tells her story in the last 20 pages of the book. I had the theme early in the book and would've liked to have been spared being dragged through the mud only to discover the hints as to the actual events throughout the book made reading the last 20 pages unnecessary. After having thoroughly enjoyed You Deserve Nothing, this was a real let down.

[Bonita · Rating 4 out of 5]

This intricate novel tells of a young woman of privilege whose life is forever altered because of her father’s political loyalty to a man unworthy of allegiance. She has born witness to human savagery and has journeyed from Liberia to Greece with only her demons as baggage.

Jacqueline is destitute and alone with her dark memories on the beautiful beaches of Santorini with no clear recollection of how she arrived. She is frightened but wants no one to sense her fear. She is hungry, but too proud to beg for sustenance. She is only twenty-three but feels as weak and vulnerable as the aged. After eating a flattened chocolate bar found on the pavement she hears the unrelenting voice of her mother claiming the find is God’s will. Jacqueline knows she cannot rely on God and must find shelter and a means to acquire food. Searching the shoreline far from the village, she finds a cave high enough above the surf to provide a dry and imperceptible temporary home. In the mornings, she picks her way carefully down the rocks to the water and hikes into the village to give foot massages to the sunbathers, thus earning enough to buy food for an evening meal before returning to her grotto. Jacqueline questions her own sanity as she is haunted by snippets of memory that blink in and out of her mind’s eye. She must find a way to let go of the past and move forward with her life, but the process alludes her until a young waitress shows her the healing power of friendship.

This work of fiction takes place primarily in the period after the exile of President Taylor toward the end of the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003. The author succeeds in illuminating the mind of a war survivor by weaving a tone of contrast throughout the book between the awesome beauty of Jacqueline’s surroundings and the ugly rage that lurks within her, so close to the surface. You may find parts of this book difficult to read, but I guarantee you won’t put it down until the final startling revelation.

[Phey Hoyman · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this book based on the positive reviews, but found it to be, for lack of a better word, boring. The entire story could be wrapped up in about 5 pages and most of the book is the author droning on and on in a "poetic way". However, as you read it, the same things happen again, and again, and again.

I can understand why some may enjoy this book, but I personally cannot fully understand how. This book is comprised of 3 ideas, living, remembering, and retelling (best way to word it without saying anything), and it's literally those 3 things the entire way through the book.

There is no character development and the "big reveal" is known by page 25. Add in the fact that page 25-190 is the same thing occurring on different days, and you have quite the literary snooze fest.

I cannot give this book anything more than one star. Aside from the common "enjoy what each day gives you" aspect, this book gave me no enjoyment in life. I would not recommend this book to anyone.