Funds for Bookworm are provided in part by Lannin Foundation.

Boots!

Where would we be without boos?

Where would we be without good?

No, Timberd.

It's a rhetorical question, sir.

But where would we need without books?

From KCRW and KCRW.com, I'm Michael Silverblatt, and this is Bookworm.

Welcome.

Today, my guest is Alexander Maxick.

His book is a marker to measure drift.

It's published by Knopf.

It's a novel that shocked me with the complete otherness of its subject matter,

its gradualness, its trance nature as prose.

We're now following a young woman named Jacqueline who has fled

from the Liberian Civil War. Now we've seen books by Dave Eggers about child soldiers.

I've read several novels and memoirs, but this is written by a white man, and this is written about a black woman, but not just a black woman, a black woman who is of the aristocracy of Liberia.

She has been trained, educated, she's traveled in Europe, so we're watching the hugest

fall.

We're not watching someone who has never had enough to eat.

We're watching a sophisticated narrator deal with the threat of complete annihilation.

That's right, yes. Now, this seems to me the biggest risk you could possibly take,

...