The New York Times What to Read Book Review

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"This Novelist Spun an Existential Question into a Best Seller"

 

"In 'The Measure,' Nikki Erlick shows what happens when adults across the globe are presented with the opportunity to learn when they will die.

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What would you do if you stepped outside one morning and found a box on your front steps — or in the hallway of your apartment building or next to your tent in the desert — containing a length of string that would indicate how long you had left to live? Would you open it, or would you toss that surprise interloper straight into the recycling bin?

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Nikki Erlick raises these questions — and a series of scenarios stemming from them — in her debut novel, 'The Measure,' which recently spent two weeks on the hardcover fiction list and is the 'Today' show’s Read With Jenna pick for July.

 

When Erlick spoke with Jenna Bush Hager and Hoda Kotb about the book, which was inspired by the Greek myth about three old women spinning threads of human destiny, a viewer asked whether she would open her own box, should one materialize as it did for every adult across the globe in her story. 'I think right now I would not open the box,' Erlick said. 'But I know that we change so much in life so I’m very open to the fact that I could change my answer later.' (Her hosts agreed with this approach; Kotb said, 'I would not go near the box!')

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Despite Erlick’s relative youth — she graduated from Harvard University in 2016 — she appears to have earned the credentials to weave fiction about a destabilizing worldwide phenomenon. She has a master’s in global thought from Columbia University and she visited about a dozen countries in three years while working as a writer for Indagare Travel.

 

'The emphasis on the interconnectedness of the world is something I took with me and put into this book' Erlick said in a phone interview. 'I had all these different characters and I knew I wanted to create a sense that even in our loneliest, most isolated moments — like when I was writing in quarantine — we’re still connected as humans. Our lives touch other lives even if we don’t actively see it happening.'"

 

 

 

by Elisabeth Egan​

 

 SOURCE