Written by John Winters   

What would it take to drive you to madness? Would happen all at once? Or would it be the sum of trivial things? The poet Charles Bukowski makes a claim for the latter: “It’s not the large things that send a man to the madhouse… but a shoelace that snaps with no time left…”

The beating back of encroaching madness is one of many themes Alexander Maksik takes up in his slender novel, “A Marker to Measure Drift” (Knopf, 221 pages). The author places us on a remote Aegean island with Jacqueline, an enigmatic young woman who has fled her home in Liberia. She finds food and shelter where she can, and keeps company mostly with the phantom voices of her parents, as well as conflicting images from her past.

In the present, Jacqueline moves from place to place, finding food, earning money on the beaches by giving massages to tourists, and avoiding any lasting connections. Meanwhile, there are mysterious men who seem to be following her. All the while, memories arrive in flashback to fill in Jacqueline’s history, her parent’s voices providing alternating commentary on her thoughts and actions. In toto, the doings in Jacqueline’s mind depict a past spent in luxury. Bit by bit, we learn her family was part of the ruling class of Liberia under the corrupt president Charles Taylor, who was elected in 1997, and soon led his country into one of the bloodiest civil wars in history, with approximately 200,000 dead.

In Jacqueline, Maksik gives us a protagonist who is broken down to the essentials. “We are our bodies and we are memory,” one of the intruding voices reminds her. Jacqueline’s hunger nearly leaves her unconscious at several points in the novel, and often she wonders where she will spend the night. She has chosen this life and to put herself at the mercy of her biological needs as a rejection of her previous life. “You must be careful of luxury. Always keep a present need,” she tells herself at one point. Jacqueline seems to be paying for the sins of her father, who we eventually learn was Taylor’s minister of finance. Or, perhaps she harbors immense guilt. Our desire for answers drive the story onward.


Maksik’s language is beautiful and sparse. He mingles Jacqueline’s past and present seamlessly, especially as her story progresses and memories of her old life begin to take over and we begin to sense her descent into insanity. Approaching the novel’s midpoint, as she sought out shelter in a strange place, he writes: “This is the beginning of madness, Jacqueline thought yet again. And then, It cannot always be the beginning of madness. Eventually it has to be madness. And perhaps you are mad. Perhaps you’ve become mad.”

One has to hand it to the author, who is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and whose first novel was “You Deserve Nothing.” He works his small canvas expertly, and delivers what by the novel’s end is a big story where the personal and political collide with devastating results.

The narrative works in a unique manner: Jacqueline’s story is relatively static; the novel’s momentum coming from the progression of her memory. This approach means we spend a lot of time with Jacqueline doing little but finding a new place to stay or something to eat. Yet, if the plot, such as it is, stalls a bit at points, we stay for the language and to see what happens to Jacqueline who we can’t help but root for.

Eventually, Jacqueline makes that human connection she’s been denying all along. She finds it in an open-hearted young waitress. For the penultimate section, the narration moves to the present tense and it is action packed, all questions are answered as Jacqueline unburdens herself to her new friend. It’s a gripping denouement, but it also reveals too much of the story’s architecture. Coming after the austere simplicity of the first 170 pages, the ending is jarring: akin to playing patty cake for a few hours and then getting hit with a left upper cut. It goes a bit too far and comes on in a rush that makes it seem forced and manipulative.

Still, there’s plenty in “A Marker to Measure Drift” to enjoy; and it gives one much to ponder – about memory, the nature of evil, the need for suffering, and the lengths some people must go to endure.

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