An Unthinkable Thing
Nicole Lundrigan
338 pages
Penguin Random House Canada
published April 12, 2022
About the book:
A tragedy brings a young boy into the home of a “perfect” family, one whose dark secrets begin closing in until a horrifying moment changes everything.
Tommie Ware’s life is turned upside down the summer of 1958, just after his eleventh birthday. When his beloved aunt—the woman who raised him—doesn’t return after her shift as a night nurse and is later found murdered, there is only one place left for Tommie to go: “home” to the mother who handed him over the day he was born. All is not as it seems behind the hedgerow surrounding the lavish Henneberry estate where Tommie’s mother, Esther, works as live-in housekeeper. Her employers have agreed he can stay until she “sorts things out,” but as she’s at the family’s beck and call around the clock, Tommie is mostly left on his own to navigate the grounds, the massive house, and the twisted family inside. Soon he is enmeshed in the oppressive attentions of matriarch Muriel, who is often heavily medicated, and of fifteen-year-old, Martin, who treats Tommie sometimes like a kid brother, sometimes like a pawn in a confusing game. Dr. Henneberry mostly ignores Tommie, and seems eager for him to be gone. Then there’s the elderly neighbor, who may know more about the family’s past than anyone else will say. By summer’s end, the secrets and games tighten around Tommie and his mother, until a horrific crime is discovered and we are faced with an unthinkable question: could an eleven-year-old boy really have committed cold-blooded murder?
My Review
This one was really different from what I was expecting. I will be thinking about this for a while. Thomas is an ordinary eleven year old boy back in the 1950s. (Yes, another historical novel that doesn’t feel very historical to me.) At the beginning we are alternating between chapters that show just how young and ordinary he is and chapters from the depositions and police inquiries where he stands accused of murdering three people.
The further I got in the book, the darker the story became. At first I thought there was no way this boy did any of these things, but as the events played out, I started to doubt my initial thought. The author did such a good job of setting a tone and then slightly altering it to draw me in. I was so connected with Tommie. He went through more at that age than most go through in a lifetime.
I’m always a fan of an alternate way to tell a story and slowly adding in the police investigation with increasing detail into the event, kept me wanting more.
About the author
NICOLE LUNDRIGAN is the author of several critically acclaimed novels, including Hideaway, which was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel, The Substitute, and Glass Boys. Her work has appeared on “best of” selections from The Globe and Mail, Amazon.ca, Chatelaine, Now magazine, and others. She grew up in Newfoundland, and now lives in Toronto.
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