I am the Messenger

Markus Zusak

Generally, I don't have just one favorite of anything -- if somebody asks me my favorite color, I might say "shades of blue, red, or green," and my favorite show would be "The Office, Glee, or Big Love."  However, if asked my favorite author, I'd safely say Markus Zusak.  He's produced books by the age of 30 like my possibly all-time favorite, The Book Thief, and another of my top books, I am the Messenger.

A lot of people have heard and read The Book Thief, and for good reason.  My class read it last year, and it quickly became one of everybody's favorite books.  The next summer I read another, less-known book by Zusak called I am the Messenger.

Ed Kennedy, an underage cabby, is incurably in love with his best friend, Audrey.  His life is filled with playing cards with his friends, and essentially Ed's a bum.  One day while at the bank with his friend, Marv, a gunman held up the bank.  They were worried more about the possibility of getting another parking ticket in the fifteen-minute parking zone outside.  Zusak immediatly sets up a feeling that these guys are not the most successful people out there -- Ed describes Marv's car as not even worth the parking ticket.

After escaping the bank, Ed begins to receive aces in he mail.  The first one, the ace of diamonds, gives three addresses and times:

45 Edgar Street, midnight

13 Harrison Avenue, 6pm

6 Macedoni Street, 5:30 am

Ed decides to go to each one, and in the process he stops a woman from being raped every night, comforts an old lady missing her husband, and helps a teenage girl gain confidence and do well in life.  The source of the card is still unknown, but cards continue to come into Ed's possession, next the clubs, followed the ace of spades and then of hearts.  Ed continues to help people, to deliver messages of inspiration and hope to different people the cards bring him to.

The cards lead him to repair relationships with his friends, including Audrey.  Finally, his own adress is written on a joker that comes in the mail.  Ed realizes that he is not the messenger, but the message.  He finds out that the person sending these cards was the bank robber, a man with a connection to Ed's father.  It's not totally clear, but I got the idea that somebody had been controlling Ed's life just to prove that somebody as ordinary as him could be the "message" -- he instructed the man to rape the woman every night, and he even killed Ed's father.

The ending was a bit fuzzy to me, but everything else -- the self-discovery, the small victories, and the helped lives -- really make for a good book.  The writing is really interesting.  There is profanity, but never gratuitous, and Zusak's use of language as is facinating.  It's simple and to the point, but still descriptive and very engaging.  I'd recommend I am the Messenger to anybody who likes mystery and adventure.