Unthinkable by Nancy Werlin (review)

When Lucy Scarborough performed the three impossible tasks to break the centuries-old curse of the Scarborough women (in Impossible, BCCB 9/08), her ancestor, Fenella, thought she would be released to the death she has sought for four hundred years; however, it was not to be. It turns out that to reverse the life-spell cast on her, Fenella must perform three tasks of destruction to balance out the three tasks of creation in the original curse. While Lucy had the help of her family, Fenella cannot even ask, because the acts of destruction must be committed against that same family; she must destroy safety, love, and hope with only the counsel of the brother of the Faerie Queen, who will enter the human realm with her as a cat. Weary of life, she is surprised to find herself charmed not only by the machines and technology of modern life, but by Walker, a family friend who awakens in her desire that she thought long dead. In addition to these pleasures, her family embraces her warmly, making her tasks more abhorrent than she could ever have imagined. Werlin manages to create in Fenella a character both prickly and sympathetic; even though she was unable to break the curse that destroyed generation after generation of her family, and her present actions are despicable and selfish, her backstory provides the necessary character development and motivation for readers to wish her success. Moreover, the plot twists reinforce the unfairness of the faerie bargain and the inevitability of seeing it through to its end. Complications hinted at in the Faerie Queen’s motives readjust the implications of Fenella’s success and make this ultimately uplifting tale as a reversal of the ecological dystopia genre—not a utopian vision, certainly, but one that carries forth hope in the possibility that creation can follow destruction.