Author: Nikki Erlick Publisher: Harper Collins, The Borough Press. 2022.

My random public library book choice had enough in the cover blurb to attract my interest. “Your fate arrives in a box on your doorstep. Do you open it?”

That is just one of the plethora of questions that are posed in this book. Individual and collective ethical questions are raised throughout the novel and the reader is challenged to pause and ask, “what if that was me?”

The story follows a group of people who have been affected by the result of waking up one morning, opening the front door and finding a box with their name on it. The boxes are found by everyone in the world who is over 22 years of age. Others get their box on their 22nd birthday. Those who open their boxes find that they contain a piece of string. The strings are of different lengths, and it is soon discovered that the length corresponds to the amount of time they have left to live. No-one knows where the boxes came from, who sent them, or why. But the strings are accurate in their predictions.

The ramifications of this knowledge are profound. For instance: “We will only send long-stringers into battle because they won’t be killed.” But, what about relationships, marriages, children, the list goes on. Set in America just before a Presidential election, part of the story concerns the demand that all candidates must show their string to the country. Authoritarian countries force their citizens to disclose their details.

The main characters in the story, as expected, have different timespans left but they come to represent the general reactions to this news. The altruistic, the greedy, the self-seeking, and those who become a comfort to others. Segregation of the short-stringers becomes evident in the community and euthanasia a desirable exercise as it allows the person to choose their time and place as well as who is going to be with them to say goodbye.

Naturally, religion comes into the stories, but in a more peripheral way. “Has God done this? If so, why?” Nobody quotes Revelation and the only Bible reference is to the passage in Matthew 7; Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement you make you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.

One thing the book does say is that church attendance rocketed upwards. Maybe there’s some sort of lesson there.