The Destiny You're Dealt

I Am the Messenger
by Markus Zusak
p. 2002

My sole impetus for picking this book up was that it was written by the same author who wrote The Book Thief, Markus Zusak. While I could find a lot of similarities stylistically, I Am the Messenger is, on the whole, a vastly different kind of story than The Book Thief. While I preferred the latter, this story is not without its merits, and this tale of slacker cab driver Ed Kennedy and his playing cards certainly boasts a much happier ending than that of Liesel Meminger and her books.

At 19, Ed is an underage cab driver in an unspecified city (but given the slang used and the fact that Zusak lives there, one can assume it’s a large city in Australia), getting by with his equally directionless friends in the months following his father’s death. They work, they drink, they play cards, they make fun of his buddy's broken down car or Ed's smelly old dog Doorman, and generally avoid serious things. Lather, rinse, repeat. That is, until a bank holdup which Ed inadvertently foils interrupts their day to day lives. At first, nothing seems different, but shortly after, Ed begins to receive playing cards that have clues on them, clues that lead him to people with lives more complicated than his, people he must help. On his own, Ed decides he must follow this odd twist of fate and change these people’s lives by delivering the messages he must decipher by observing them, and in the process, Ed learns a lot about himself and what he is truly capable of.

As I’ve said, stylistically, a lot of comparisons can be found to Zusak’s most prolific work, The Book Thief. Both are written in a sparse, dreamy style, with sentences broken up and thoughts passed out haphazardly in an almost stream-of-consciousness style. This is because both stories are narrated by characters who are also players in the book—in this case, Ed, in the case of The Book Thief, Death. Thematically, both stories emphasize the beauty in little acts of kindness and the power in humanity. I found both of these comparisons to be a bit more jarring in I Am the Messenger. Perhaps this is because it is my second outing with Zusak and recognizing the patterns takes me out of the story. Or perhaps it is because the writing style—while minimalistic, makes the whole thing feel a bit melodramatic at times, like Ed/Zusak is delivering the Greatest Story Ever Told and wants us to know it. Plenty of times in I Am the Messenger I found myself wishing he would just tone it down a little bit and stop making every sentence feel like the revealing twist at the end of a thrilling movie.

[Speaking of movies, both of the books I’ve read of Zusak’s would translate very well to screen, and I’m a little shocked that none of them have been commissioned yet. The quirkiness of I Am the Messenger in particular could be very fun if presented visually. Ed Kennedy is a great character, but the effort to present him as a down-to-earth, average teenager dumbs down the poetry of his actions. To see them from an outside perspective might be nice.]

When we arrive at the actual twist to I Am the Messenger—that is, who is sending the cards and why—it’s not really a big surprise, or if it is, then it’s not a very satisfying one. I almost wish Zusak had just ignored the impulse to include a twist, as I feel it detracted from the ending. Also, by this point in the book I was so frustrated with Ed’s random logic and leaps to conclusions that did not readily present themselves that I didn’t even care about the person behind it all. That is the only thing that really bothered me about this book—Ed’s reasons for following the cards doesn’t make sense to me at all. It’s one thing to try to better yourself and hope for destiny, but the way in which Ed so accurately interpreted his cause—not to mention some of his dubious methods of fulfilling them—seemed wrong to me, like Ed had privileged knowledge the reader was not made aware of, which we know he did not. It just seemed like a lazy way to move from plot point to plot point. Also, there is no way the guiding force behind the novel’s events is anything but supernatural, and if that is the case, why bother having a ‘logical’ explanation behind it at all?

I am being harsh on this book. Perhaps I expected more because of how good The Book Thief was. The truth is, if you can stomach the style choices made by Zusak, I Am the Messenger is a delightful read—full of beauty and charm and benevolence that can move you if you let it. I’m definitely in for more by this author if all his stories can make you feel this good.