Who killed Christoffer in A Nearly Normal Family?
In a series of flashbacks, we learn that Stella did in fact kill Christoffer, but that she didn’t intend for it to happen. “He wasn’t supposed to die,” she reveals during her trial. She meets Chris during her 19th birthday celebrations.
There is a sinister side to him that is teased throughout the series, but in the finale, we learn that Chris had drugged and kidnapped Stella’s friend Armina. Stella rushes to his home to save her friend and Chris gives chase. In the end, after months at trial, a flashback shows that Stella did stab Chris. Amina helps Stella hide the knife and they both keep the full truth to themselves until it’s revealed at the conclusion of Stella’s trial.
As a seasoned criminal defense attorney, Ulrika advised Amina to not reveal the events leading up to Chris’ death so that prosecutors couldn’t try to convict both her and Stella for the murder. Instead, by waiting until the trial to share her side of the story, Amina could introduce an alternate suspect in the case, meaning Stella couldn’t be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It works, and Stella goes free.
In an interview with Caledon Books, the A Nearly Normal Family author explained how the idea for the novel came to him. “I was lying in bed one night trying to fall asleep. I have two daughters, who are three and six years old, and I started to think about 10 years or so , when my daughters will be out with friends, downtown, and so on. I think every parent can relate to that fear of not knowing when your child is coming home,” he said.
“Then, I imagined my future teen daughter coming home way past midnight and me having the feeling that something is wrong. I imagined myself going downstairs into the laundry room to find that my daughter had tried to wash blood off of her clothes. I asked myself what I would do. If my daughter was brought in by the police the next morning, accused of murdering a man, what would I say? How would I react? How far would I go in stretching the truth to protect my daughter?”
He continued: “I don’t think I ever could have written this book if it wasn’t for the fact that I have been a high school teacher for 15 years. I know how 18-year-old girls interact—I know their world, and I also know that parents and teenagers do not always share everything with each other. In some extreme cases, it seems they really don’t know each other very well. That is one thing I wanted to take a closer look at in this novel: How well do we really know our teenagers?”
