Just like big moments, big books have a before and after. When The Book Thief became the phenomenon it did – 16m copies sold, global book tour, Hollywood film – it seemed no one knew what to make of its author, Markus Zusak: a smiley, self-effacing thirtysomething from Engadine who wrote novels mainly read by Australian teenagers and who had now produced a huge bestseller in the form of a 500-page novel set in Nazi Germany and narrated by Death.
When his next book did not seem forthcoming – Bridge of Clay would take 13 years to be published – hungry readers turned instead to Zusak’s previous book The Messenger, an adaptation of which is about to begin on the ABC.
Again, some did not know what to make of it: “I still remember the exact words of one Amazon customer review that said, ‘I can’t believe the genius who wrote The Book Thief wrote this pile of shit,’” Zusak says.
That one review affected Zusak so much that he did not want UK publishers (who had passed on The Book Thief – twice – before it became a New York Times bestseller) to release The Messenger there, because he was afraid it would be marketed as The Book Thief Two.
“I was 30 but I was still just a kid,” the 47-year-old says. “I’ve never been a very assertive or confident person. I’m still not. You’re always at war with yourself. But I say this with a smile on my face – ” and he is often smiling – “if you believe the great reviews, you’ve got to believe the bad ones.”
As a teenager and later as a bookseller, I was evangelical about The Messenger. For a while, nothing spoke to me as much as this strange novel following Ed Kennedy (played in the ABC show by Will McKenna), a hapless young taxi driver who starts receiving mysterious playing cards in the post. Each one has addresses or clues written on them, directing him to complete strangers who need help in ways he must discover.
The eight-episode arc sees Ed come up with solutions ranging from small acts of kindness to outright deception and violence. He befriends an elderly woman who thinks she is his wife, takes on an abusive husband and attempts to unite two fighting brothers, among many tasks. His friends Audrey (Alexandra Jensen), Ritchie (Kartanya Maynard) and Marv (Chris Alosio) watch on as Ed’s life is steadily taken up with his quest, assigned to him by a mysterious taskmaster who – if the show follows the book – is identified in a spectacularly audacious conclusion.
As a book, The Messenger toes the line between young adult and adult fiction in the way all of Zusak’s big-hearted books do. (Indeed, The Book Thief was published as a book for adults in Australia and as a YA novel in the US.) It’s another quality that once made Zusak hard to pin down: now, we could probably say he is Australia’s answer to the US’s John Green, who also writes about young people muddling along with an open-hearted earnestness that is easy to tear down.
“No one will ever say, ‘I’m a bit embarrassed about loving Trainspotting,’ But they might say, ‘I’m a bit embarrassed about loving The Notebook,’” Zusak says. “But for whatever reason, we’re often embarrassed about loving something that is going into the softer side of ourselves. The Messenger certainly does that. But I’d rather be an open book and just show who I am. I can’t really reprogram myself.”
Twenty-one years after he wrote The Messenger, Zusak went back and read it before serving as an executive producer on the ABC show. His teenage daughter also read it for the first time. “She said, ‘Well if it is going to be on TV, I guess I should,’” he says, laughing. “She’s always been very ambivalent about my books, which I really like. I think that shows a sense of self.”
There were attempts to adapt The Messenger years ago but Zusak was adamant that he wanted any adaptation to be written and made in Australia. “It wasn’t that I felt too burned by Hollywood making The Book Thief. The Messenger just felt like such an Australian story, it felt like it was worth hanging in there for this. In some ways, we should be a little bit parochial. Not in any jingoistic or ugly sports way, but we should know these are our stories. This book came from the outer suburbs. The Messenger was filmed in New South Wales and I love that, because that’s where I’m from, where the ideas in that book came from.”
He told the show’s writers – Sarah Lambert, Kim Wilson, Kirsty Fisher and Magda Wozniak – to “take some risks and make some mistakes – it’s not like the book is mistake-free! There are some big differences between the book and the show, but the heart is still the same.”
“And to be totally honest, I think the TV series is better, in a lot of ways,” he says. “The world is bigger, the characters are more complex. But if it doesn’t go as planned, I can always say, ‘Well, I wrote the book!’”
While reading The Messenger, he saw glimpses of his twentysomething self: an ambitious writer completely free from the world’s expectations. “I was young, I didn’t really know what I was doing,” he says. “It is just not as worked on as my other books. The Book Thief was a tremendous effort to write, but it appears to have been effortless. Bridge of Clay was a tremendous effort to write, but you can feel that effort in every sentence.
“With The Messenger, if there’s blue carpet on the floor, it’s just blue carpet. I was less concerned with detail, and I should be like that more. Steven Spielberg watches his first film Duel every year or two to remind himself what he was like – I think that is pretty cool. I think it’s good to be reminded of what got you to this point.”
During his eighth year of writing – and rewriting – Bridge of Clay, Zusak went back to the opening pages of his manuscript and realised it felt as though it was written by a complete stranger. Billed as the “most anticipated book of the decade” off the back of The Book Thief, the novel received lukewarm praise. The 13-year gap between books was down to a number of factors: his daughter was born, a huge success had upended his life, and then there was the sheer weight of expectation.
“I have vowed I can never, ever let that happen again,” he says. “Look, I’m so lucky. I really have to stress that. You can’t whinge about the pressure – it’s only there because something really fortunate happened. So I would never wish The Book Thief away. It is the book you hope for.”
After spending a year or two on another novel, Zusak has put it aside to write his first nonfiction book. “It could be done at the end of this year – but all my friends tease me when I say anything will be finished at the end of this year,” he says, smiling. “A lot of years have gone by like that.”
The Messenger starts on ABC and ABC iview on Sunday 14 May at 8.20pm
