If this all sounds a bit sedate, there’s plenty of action in I Am the Messenger, as well. But he develops a touching relationship with Milla, a senile elderly woman who is still waiting for her 60-years-dead husband, Jimmy, to come home from the war, and a cheerful family who struggle to pay the bills but whose love for each other is evident.
His relationship with 15-year-old high school runner Sophie sometimes borders on the creepy-he fairly stalks her as he investigates her case, and repeatedly thinks or remarks about her long legs and pretty face (probably true to life for a 19 year old, but she is, after all, underage). As he begins to investigate the clues, he discovers a diverse group of people who need help in one form or another, from the serious (domestic abuse) to the moment-of-joy (a single mother who really just wants to enjoy her own ice cream cone).ĭespite his propensity for hanging out with a bunch of fellow do-nothing cabbies, getting drunk, and sleeping till afternoon, Ed begins to find purpose in helping others. Shortly after, Ed begins receiving playing cards scrawled with names, addresses, or other vague clues, in the mail. I Am the Messenger follows Ed, an unremarkable, no-ambition, 19-year-old Lost Boy and cab driver who stumbles onto-and accidentally thwarts-a bank robbery. It’s no wonder it took Zusak until 2018 to follow up that act with the newly released Bridge of Clay. But since the new novel wasn’t out yet when I loaded up on Kindle books in the fall, I went back a bit to Zusak’s I Am the Messenger, published three years before The Book Thief.
Such is the case for Markus Zusak, Australian YA writer, whose 2005 novel The Book Thiefrightfully won a slew of literary awards, was one of the books that sparked adult interest in novels ostensibly aimed at teens, and was even got the de-rigeuer forgettable Hollywood treatment in 2015. Though you’re forever lauded for and associated with that work, everything else you do is also compared to it in perpetuity, and generally found lacking. On some level, it must suck to create a work of great innovation or genius.
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