The Impossible Thing

The novel opens with Finn Garrett, a military-trained officer of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB), capturing Matthew Barr, a prolific illegal egg collector, in the Brecon Beacons after two years of surveillance.

The narrative shifts to Bempton cliffs, Yorkshire, in 1920, where "climming" gangs descend sheer sea cliffs on ropes to harvest the eggs of guillemots, cliff-nesting seabirds, for wealthy collectors. Jim Chandler, an aging gang leader, dominates the trade through a secret notebook recording the locations of the best eggs. The economy depends on a biological quirk: Each guillemot lays a uniquely patterned egg and will produce an identical replacement if the first is stolen early in the season.

At nearby Metland Farm, Celie Sheppard is born around 1920 with white hair and pale blue eyes unlike her dark-featured father, John Sheppard. He accuses his wife Enid of infidelity and abandons the family. Enid works the farm with the help of Robert, a slow orphan boy who stays because he cannot imagine a life elsewhere. Celie's older siblings blame her for their father's departure, and Robert becomes her sole guardian.

The present-day storyline centers on Patrick Fort, a young man in his early twenties who exhibits traits consistent with autism, including devotion to routine and difficulty reading social cues. One evening, Patrick finds his friend Weird Nick and Nick's mother bound and gagged after a break-in. The robbers ignored cash, taking only an old red guillemot egg in a carved wooden box that Nick had found in his attic and briefly listed on eBay. Patrick traces the sole bidder, "eggman456," to Cardiff, but the confrontation fails. Patrick's friend Meg, a medical student, suggests contacting the Natural History Museum. Dr. Christopher Connor, the curator of eggs at the museum's Tring branch, is attending Barr's sentencing at a nearby court.

In the historical timeline, six-year-old Celie discovers a crack in the Metland overhang leading to the cliff face. Robert lowers her on an old rope, and despite her terror she grabs eggs before falling several feet. The Chandler gang hauls her to safety. That night she discovers a third egg hidden in her makeshift harness: a guillemot egg of pure, deep red, a color never before seen. She sells it to George Ambler, a London broker, for 10 pounds after Jim negotiates on her behalf.

Ambler orchestrates a viewing dinner for three wealthy collectors to auction the egg but cancels, falsely claiming it was stolen. A threatening letter, "You had best do right by that girl" (87), terrifies him. He secretly negotiates a contract with the Sheppard family for 20 pounds per egg annually, transforming their fortunes. The collectors' bitterness festers for years through dinners of the Oological Society, a society of egg collectors, while Ambler hoards every egg.

At Barr's sentencing, Connor and Garrett clash over whether museum collections enable or combat illegal collecting. The judge awards Barr's collection to the RSPB, and Connor storms out. During the commotion outside, Patrick memorizes Barr's address from scattered legal documents. Connor invites Nick and Patrick to the Tring museum, where the guillemot room holds over 50,000 eggs from Ambler's collection, much of it uncatalogued. Connor reveals Ambler was murdered but never mentions the Metland Egg, an omission Patrick later finds significant. He asks repeatedly about the "data," small slips noting each egg's provenance, and is disappointed when Nick says he discarded it.

A parallel subplot introduces Lynne and Alan Sweet, volunteer RSPB Nest Guardians watching over a golden eagle pair in Scotland. An unnamed man saws nearly through branches near the nest, rigging them to break under a climber's weight.

Nick and Patrick visit Barr, who identifies the red egg as possibly the Metland Egg, "the greatest mystery in the history of eggs" (161). As they talk, Garrett arrives and destroys Barr's confiscated cabinets with a sledgehammer. Patrick flees and accidentally hides in Garrett's car. Garrett warns him that the conflict is an old war in which "people still get hurt. Some still get killed" (188). Patrick then realizes an item in the car is a balaclava identical to those worn by Nick's robbers, and he escapes, convinced Garrett stole the egg.

In the historical timeline, Mr. Constable, the Sheppards' landlord with the same pale blue eyes as Celie, marries Enid, confirming he is Celie's biological father, and transfers the Metland lease to Robert. Celie, now in Scarborough, pines for Robert until he chases her departing taxi and proposes on one knee in the dust; her heart "near burst with joy" (223). In 1941, Robert is killed by a car while preventing Celie's brother Stanley from enlisting. Pregnant and grief-stricken, Celie identifies with the guillemot and refuses to collect the egg again.

On the drive home, Patrick and Nick piece together a theory. Connor's persistent interest in the data, combined with his failure to mention the Metland Egg, suggests he already possesses 29 of the 30 eggs hidden among the uncatalogued collection and needs the provenance documentation. They search Nick's attic and find the crumpled data slip: "Guillemot, Metland, June 1926. GFA." Patrick plans a heist: Nick will distract Connor with the data while Patrick retrieves the eggs from drawers he identified through ladder marks on the parquet floor.

When Ambler learns no egg will be collected that summer, he travels to Yorkshire in fury. He bribes Little Tom Chandler, Jim's young grandson, to go through the crack but cannot haul the boy back up. At Metland Farm, he tries to force Celie to retrieve the egg, intending to humiliate her. She resists; Ambler, pursuing her in darkness, drowns in a slurry pit behind the barn. Little Tom's body washes up days later, along with Ambler's stovepipe hat. Jim is arrested based on his declared vow to kill whoever harmed Celie but is acquitted. In Scotland, the unnamed thief returns to climb the sabotaged tree and falls to his death; evidence in his pockets links the dead man to Barr's circle.

The fate of the Metland Eggs is then revealed. Ambler's butler, Mr. Edwards, evacuates Martha, the housemaid Ambler had been sexually assaulting since she was 14, and her son Philip, Ambler's child. Martha takes the 30 red eggs. They settle in a cottage in the Brecon Beacons, the very house that becomes Nick's home. Edwards arranges the sale of 29 eggs to the Natural History Museum; one is kept for Philip in its carved box. Philip takes Martha's surname, Farrell, and becomes Nick's maternal grandfather, whose possessions fill the attic where Nick found the egg.

At Tring, Nick fakes a broken ankle to occupy Connor while Patrick enters the guillemot room, dismantles a cabinet from inside, and extracts all 30 eggs. He escapes through a bathroom window, and Meg drives him away. Patrick discovers a tracking device inside one egg and decides the eggs should return to the cliffs. At Metland Farm, Connor tracks them and confronts them with a gun, but Garrett fires warning shots that protect Patrick and Meg. On the overhang, Patrick hurls the backpack off the cliff. The 30 hollow eggs float down through wheeling birds "like fiery red lanterns" (320) before disappearing against the dark ocean.

The final chapter returns to 1941. Celie flings Ambler's hat off the overhang into the sea and stands in the moonlight, feeling lighter despite her pregnancy. Beneath her feet, under the overhang where no one will ever go again, a single guillemot sits on a single, perfect, red egg: the one egg that was never stolen.