75. I AM THE MESSENGER

Markus Zusak 2002

In this marvelous novel, nineteen year old cab driver Ed Kennedy's ordinary and mediocre life (with likewise lackadaisical friends Marv and Ritchie) turns very complicated and exciting after he foils a bank robbery. A series of card aces then appear, each with three names/ addresses/ messages, each one appearing only after he completed the previous task. Through these tasks, the book imparts subtle lessons on life, and brilliantly engages the reader to follow his journey and to keep guessing and discovering just WHO it was who sent him the messages.

'The gunman is useless.
I know it.
He knows it.
The whole bank knows it.'(opening lines)

'The thing to note with Marv is that he's problematic at the best of times. Argumentative. Less than amiable. He's the type of friend you find yourself constantly arguing with-- especially when it comes to his shitbox Falcon. He's also a completely immature arsehole when he's in the mood.'(6)

'For a moment, I look down and pity him because I realize that I'm quite possibly looking at the most hapless man on earth. First of all, he robs a bank with unutterably stupid people like Marv and me inside it. Then his getaway car vanishes. Then, when he's onto a good thing because he knows how to get his hands on a different car, it's the most pathetic car in the Southern Hemisphere. In a way, I feel sorry for him. Imagine it-- the humiliation.'(11)

'Who would send me something like this? I ask myself. What have I done to get an old playing card in my letter box with strange addresses scrawled on it?'(26)

'If I can go through a conversation with her without being called a wanker or dickhead at least once, I'm in front. The worst thing about it is the sheer emphasis she swears with. Whenever she calls me something like that, she spits it from her mouth, practically hurling it at me.'(28)

'To fill you in, Ritchie's name isn't even really Ritchie. It's Dave Sanchez. We call him Ritchie because he has a tattoo of Jimi Hendrix on his right arm but everyone reckons it looks more like Richard Pryor. Thus Ritchie. Everyone laughs and says he should get Gene Wilder on the other arm and he'll have the perfect combination. They were a dynamic duo if ever there was one.'(32)

'You never know, I tell myself. One day there might be a few select people who'll say, "Yes, Dylan was on the brink of stardom when he was nineteen. Dali was well on his way to being a genius, and Joan of Arc was burned at the stake for being the most important women in history. And at nineteen, Ed Kennedy found that first card in the mail.'(36)

'He has sex with her and the bed cries out in pain. It creaks and wails and only I can hear it. Christ, it's deafening. Why can't the world hear? I ask myself. Within a few moments I ask it many times. Because it doesn't care, I finally answer, and I know I'm right. It's like I've been chosen. But chosen for what? I ask.'(41)

'Typically, it's not going to be that easy. There are no addresses this time. There's no uniform to this. There's nothing to make any part of it secure. Each part is a test, and part of that is in the unexpected.
This time, it's words.
Only words.'(113)

'Earlier, I told him about the cards, to which he said, "How does this sort of thing always seem to happen to you, Ed? If there's anything weird floating around, it always manages to land on you. You're like a weird-shit magnet."(136)

'Our footsteps run, and I don't want them to end. I want to run and laugh and feel like this forever. I want to avoid any awkward moment when the realness of reality sticks its fork into our flesh, leaving us standing there, together. I want to stay here, in this moment, and never go to other places, where we don't know what to say or what to do.'(155)

'It's not a big thing, but I guess, it's true-- big things are often just small things that are noticed.'(221)

'It's with those words that I see things from Audrey's perspective. She liked me being just Ed. It was safer that way. Stable. Now I've changed things. I've left my own fingerprints on the world, no matter how small, and it's upset the equilibrium of us-- Audrey and me.'(232)

'Carefully now, her statement comes out. "Believe it or not-- it takes a lot of love to hate you like this."(245)

'It's the heart that hurts most when things go wrong and fall apart.'(270)

'I'd wanted to stay on that porch with him until the sun shone bright on both of us, but I didn't. I stood up and walked down the steps. I'd rather chase the sun than wait for it.'(283)

'And if a guy like you can stand up and do what you did for all those people, well, maybe everyone can. Maybe everyone can live beyond what they're capable of.'(353)

First American Edition, February 2005
357 pages
Book borrowed from the library