An Unthinkable Thing
It’s 1958. Tommie lives with his aunt Celia in a small but homey apartment in a poor section of town. She works as a nurse, working the night shift. She loves him and he loves her. He’s about to turn eleven, and he’s looking forward to summer and spending time with his best friend Jake, who lives with his parents nearby.
The day Tommie was born, his mother handed him to her sister to raise. They’re not estranged — his mother visits them for a few hours from time to time — but she’s like a stranger to him.
Then Celia fails to return from one of her night shifts, and her body is found in a park, apparently another victim of a killer who’s been preying on women in the area. Tommie is sent to live with his mother for the first time. She’s a live-in-housekeeper for a wealthy family, the Henneberrys. They have a large, luxurious house, but Tommie and his mother share a small room behind the kitchen. And there are undercurrents in the household that he doesn’t understand.
Before summer is over, Tommie is accused of shooting the Henneberrys and their teenage son, Martin.
The story is told in alternating sections. The main narration is from Tommie’s point of view, starting just before his birthday and leading up to the deaths. Interspersed between these scenes, transcripts from the trial evidence present the damning case against him as it unfolds.
Lundrigan is superb at presenting a child’s point of view. Tommie is naïve to many of the nuances that become apparent to the reader. As we learn about the lies, deceptions and twisted relationships that have shaped the lives of these people, we start to think Tommie would be justified in taking that final step. We don’t learn the full picture until the very end.
Nicole Lundrigan was born in Ottawa in 1972, where her family lived while her father was an MP representing Gander-Twillingate. The family, including her five siblings, returned to Newfoundland when she was two. After high school, she completed a BSc from the University of New Brunswick and a BA in anthropology from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax. In 1996 she moved Toronto, where she completed an MSc from the University of Toronto with a focus on physical anthropology, specializing in the conditions affecting the degradation of DNA in post-mortem skeletal remains.
After graduating, she did some freelance writing and began work on her first novel, drawing on a lifetime of reading mystery/crime as well as a love for character-driven novels. Her first novel, Unravelling Arva, was published in 2003.
She has now published eight novels, all of which have received considerable acclaim. Her two most recent are Hideaway (2019) which was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best Crime Novel, and An Unthinkable Thing (2022) which was a finalist for Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence - Best Crime Novel. She’s particularly effective at writing from the point of view of a child narrator, featured in both her recent books.
Lundrigan lives in Toronto with her husband and children.
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