Yes, she was the narrator for quite a while. Maggie, the character you eliminated, was the narrator? How did Matthew end up the narrator? At some point, I had to say that’s as good as I can get it I’m going to hurt it more if I keep going. I sort of feel like I could write forever. I think I’m just always chipping away, taking pieces and adding pieces, and trying to make it one whole, complete world. I do spend a lot of time scrambling around in the dark and sometimes I do think, “Gosh, I wrote part one of this book in 2009 and then suddenly it’s 2016 and I’m still writing new material.” So, yes, keeping consistency is a challenge at times. Talk about killing your darlings! She was there for so long, then I realized she wasn’t right for the book. There was a character named Maggie in the book for six years, then I cut her out. I mean, I had a totally different narrator at first. You spend a lot of your time as a writer doing that. I could recognize that wasn’t “it.” That wasn’t the book. The one thing I can say is, back then I couldn’t really write, but I at least had some sort of editorial eye.

I actually wrote the book when I was that age. How has working on Bridge of Clay over a period of so many years affected your writing process and the story itself? Much has changed in the world and, I’m sure, personally since that initial idea and since you first started writing the novel. Now, two decades later, the result of that idea is about to be available to readers. You’ve said that the idea for Bridge of Clay has been with you since age 20. Zusak spoke with PW about his two-decade journey writing Bridge of Clay, juggling notes from multiple editors, and the young adult categorization of his novels. A family saga, Bridge of Clay tells the story of Clay, one of five unruly Dunbar brothers, who possesses a secret that could shatter the lives that the boys have built in the wake of their mother’s death and father’s abandonment. More than a decade after the publication of his last book, the international bestseller The Book Thief, Australian author Markus Zusak returns with a much-anticipated new novel.

Markus zusak clay bridge