The Measure

The author uses a heavy-handed metaphor to hammer home the unoriginal message that we shouldn't let our differences define us. Also, we should all live fully in the moment. Here's the allegedly thought-provoking premise: one day in early March, every adult in the entire world receives a small, wooden box, containing a piece of string. How this happened, or who is responsible, is never explained or explored. Pretty quickly, scientists determine that the length of each person's string is a measure of how long they will live.

Before you can say “blue eyes/brown eyes classroom experiment,” a dichotomy develops between those individuals with strings denoting a normal lifespan and those predicting an early demise. These “short stringers” are barred from certain professions, dropped by health insurance plans, and labeled as potentially violent criminals. The novel primarily focuses on several members of a support group for short stringers, and their friends/lovers. There's also a moustache-twirling evil politician who stirs up more short-string paranoia, campaigning for president as the only long-string candidate who will keep the country safe from the dangerous others. The parallels to DT45 are not subtle.

The only characters with any depth are two military academy roommates who make an unprecedented choice with their string that has far-reaching repercussions. By the end of the book, thanks to the monolithically progressive Young People of the world, everyone realizes that #AllStringsMatter, and that the length of your life isn't as important as what you do with it (there is literally a “Live Like Your String is Short” t-shirt).

If you believe that racism and other -isms can be solved if we all recognize our similarities instead of our differences, this is the book for you. But if you realize there are no easy answers to the racist, homophobic mess we're in, you will likely find it as patronizing and ingenuous as I did.