The Messenger / I am the Messenger
Sometimes people are beautiful…
from mz
There was a very practical reason for The Messenger being titled I am the Messenger in other territories. Lois Lowry, who wrote The Giver, had a book called Messenger coming out at almost exactly the same time, with the same publishing house, no less – so I deferred, respectfully, to a writer who’d paid a lot more dues than I had. At least this time it was only a title change; I wouldn’t have changed anything else. I’d learnt my lesson.
As for where The Messenger came from?
It was a gift.
In the great coastal town of Kiama, here in New South Wales, my car was parked in a fifteen-minute zone outside the bank, which led to important questions.
What if you were in that bank and it was getting robbed? How would you get out to move your car to avoid getting a fine?
That premise became The Messenger, chapter one, and it’s the one chapter in my whole career that almost wrote itself. It gave me all that followed:
Ed Kennedy, his friends, the card games – and Ed’s mysterious quest.
from the publisher
Ed Kennedy is an underage cab driver without much of a future. He’s pathetic at playing cards, hopelessly in love with his best friend Audrey, and utterly devoted to his coffee-drinking dog, the Doorman. His life is one of peaceful routine and incompetence until he inadvertently stops a bank robbery.
That’s when the first ace arrives in the mail.
That’s when Ed becomes a messenger.
Until only one question remains: who is behind Ed’s mission?
final note
This is really important: Ed Kennedy’s dog, the Doorman, is one of my favourite characters I’ve written – and The Messenger was a strange, doubtful, joyful part of my life. I feel like I wrote quite lightly at that time; I kept things moving. It had all the surreal leanings of my previous work, but more story, and more ambition. It was a step up.
One last note about this book. There’s a quote that’s often attributed to me: Sometimes people are beautiful. Not in looks, not in what they say. Just in what they are.
Most people who quote that line think it comes from The Book Thief, but some readers (you know who you are) understand perfectly that it comes from The Messenger. They’re a special part of my audience, telling me, ‘Yeah, yeah, Book Thief, whatever – this is the book we love.’ And I definitely love you all back.