I Am the Messenger
Meet Ed Kennedy—underage cabdriver, pathetic cardplayer, and useless at romance. He lives in a shack with his coffee-addicted dog, the Doorman, and he’s hopelessly in love with his best friend, Audrey. His life is one of peaceful routine and incompetence, until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery. That’s when the first Ace arrives. That’s when Ed becomes the messenger. . . .Chosen to care, he makes his way through town helping and hurting (when necessary), until only one question remains: Who’s behind Ed’s mission?
Winner of the 2003 Children’s Book Council Book of the Year Award in Australia, I Am the Messenger is a cryptic journey filled with laughter, fists, and love.
From the Hardcover edition.
Product Details
Editorial Reviews
From School Library Journal
Grade 9 Up - Nineteen-year-old cabbie Ed Kennedy has little in life to be proud of: his dad died of alcoholism, and he and his mom have few prospects for success. He has little to do except share a run-down apartment with his faithful yet smelly dog, drive his taxi, and play cards and drink with his amiable yet similarly washed-up friends. Then, after he stops a bank robbery, Ed begins receiving anonymous messages marked in code on playing cards in the mail, and almost immediately his life begins to swerve off its beaten-down path. Usually the messages instruct him to be at a certain address at a certain time. So with nothing to lose, Ed embarks on a series of missions as random as a toss of dice: sometimes daredevil, sometimes heartwarmingly safe. He rescues a woman from nightly rape by her husband. He brings a congregation to an abandoned parish. The ease with which he achieves results vacillates between facile and dangerous, and Ed's search for meaning drives him to complete every task. But the true driving force behind the novel itself is readers' knowledge that behind every turn looms the unknown presence - either good or evil - of the person or persons sending the messages. Zusak's characters, styling, and conversations are believably unpretentious, well conceived, and appropriately raw. Together, these key elements fuse into an enigmatically dark, almost film-noir atmosphere where unknowingly lost Ed Kennedy stumbles onto a mystery - or series of mysteries - that could very well make or break his life. - Hillias J. Martin, New York Public Library
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* Gr. 9-12. Ed is a 19-year-old loser only marginally connected to the world; he's the son that not even his mother loves. But his life begins to change after he acts heroically during a robbery. Perhaps it's the notoriety he receives that leads to his receiving playing cards in the mail. Ed instinctively understands that the scrawled words on the aces are clues to be followed, which lead him to people he will help (including some he'll have to hurt first). But as much as he changes those who come into his life, he changes himself more. Two particular elements will keep readers enthralled: the panoply of characters who stream in and out of the story, and the mystery of the person sending Ed on the life-altering missions. Concerning the former, Zusak succeeds brilliantly. Ed's voice is assured and unmistakeable, and other characters, although seen through Ed's eyes, are realistically and memorably evoked (readers will almost smell Ed's odoriferous dog when it ambles across the pages). As for the ending, however, Zusak is too clever by half. He offers too few nuts-and-bolts details before wrapping things up with an unexpected, somewhat unsatisfying recasting of the narrative. Happily, that doesn't diminish the life-affirming intricacies that come before. Ilene Cooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
“The Book Thief is unsettling and unsentimental, yet ultimately poetic. Its grimness and tragedy run through the reader’s mind like a black-and-white movie, bereft of the colors of life. Zusak may not have lived under Nazi domination, but The Book Thief deserves a place on the same shelf with The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel’s Night. It seems poised to become a classic.” -USA Today
"Zusak doesn’t sugarcoat anything, but he makes his ostensibly gloomy subject bearable the same way Kurt Vonnegut did in Slaughterhouse-Five: with grim, darkly consoling humor.”
- Time Magazine
"Elegant, philosophical and moving...Beautiful and important."
- Kirkus Reviews, Starred
"An extraordinary narrative."
- School Library Journal, Starred
"Exquisitely written and memorably populated, Zusak's poignant tribute to words, survival, and their curiously inevitable entwinement is a tour
de force to be not just read but inhabited."
- The Horn Book Magazine, Starred
"One of the most highly anticipated young-adult books in years."
- The Wall Street Journal
From the Hardcover edition.
Customer Reviews
expected more
I suppose I was looking to be blown away I as I was with the Book Thief.
Although this was a fine novel with a great mystery to keep me turning the pages, I found some of the writing sytle and language hard to get through. The main character grew on me and I really came to love him for his strengths and weaknesses.
Great Book, til the end
I Am the Messenger was an enjoyable read. It was hard to put down and the stories were very interesting. I do wish that the ending would have been a little different. I feel like the book just dies at the end and it was really disappointing after a great story.
Ed was a great character and some of the people he helps were also fascinating charaters. I felt that some of his friends could have been a little more developed. Some of them did gain interesting stories towards the end, but I wanted more from characters like Audrey and Ritchie.
Fantastic beginning, then downhill to the end...
I just finished the Australian book titled "I Am the Messenger" by Markus Zusak; the first book I've ever read by this author, though one of his other books (The Book Thief) has received wide acclaim. The story is meant for older teens only, I'd say (due to strong language and mature situations) and is a complete departure from the sort of YA books I usually read. It got off to an amusing and very promising start when Ed, a teen drifting through life without any clear direction, foils a bank robbery. Soon after he begins receiving anonymous messages directing him to locations where he has the opportunity to do some good in the world. The book is very well written, and the situations in which the protagonist finds himself are occasionally horrifying, sometimes amusing, and in a few instances very touching. (All the scenes with Milla rather got to me, for instance.)
Even though the character's actions---and the plot in general---continued to become increasingly far-fetched and unbelievable as the book went on, the story still held my attention. Well, right up until the big twist ending and reveal, that is! Literally within the last five pages, the author introduced an incredibly stupid and annoying deux ex machina plot device to solve the mystery of who exactly is sending the notes. This shoddy, lazy finish to the story had me ready to throw the book right across the room. I certainly had a lot of choice words to say about the conclusion (some of which I had learned from this very book!) which I cannot print out in this review. Ha!
So, a mixed-to-negative review on this one from me. The good points of the book, and the writing skill of the author, were overshadowed by an increasingly convoluted and illogical plot progression in the second half of the manuscript, and a crappy, crappy ending. I'm still so ticked off by it, in fact, that I don't know that I'll bother to seek out anything else the author has written...
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