We Rip The World Apart

Charlene Carr, author of 2023's popular Hold My Girl, is back with We Rip The World Apart, a story that is filled with relevant, important and poignant themes surrounding race, family and trauma.

The story uses multiple timelines and POVs that follow the lives of three generations of one family who have roots and history in both Jamaica and Canada. Evelyn is a white woman who meets and marries her Black husband, Kingsley in Jamaica where they start their family with the birth of their son Antony. But with the dangerous political climate in 1980's Jamaica, they choose to move to Toronto where they add Kareela to their family many years later. Evelyn and Kingsley begin to worry about Antony as a biracial young man who is becoming more aware of racism and its impact on him, and others like him. His parents' worst predictions come to pass when Antony is killed by police at a rally. 

Carr shows readers how this incident and the resulting grief ripples through the family, impacting the parents, Kingsley's mother and young Kareela. Through these characters, she shows complexities of biracial relationships, the impact of racism (systemic, covert and overt), identity, activism and enduring issues stemming from trauma, grief and complicated family dynamics.  

While this was a much slower read than I was expecting (not pulling me in until the 40% mark), the topics Carr explores gives readers much to think about and reflect upon and will instigate great discussion, making this a good selection for book clubs. 

Disclaimer: My sincere thanks to the publisher for the advanced digital copy of this book which was provided in exchange for my honest review.

My Rating: 3.75 stars

Author: Charlene Carr

Genre: Historical Fiction, Contemporary Fiction, Canadian

Type and Source: eBook ARC from publisher via NetGalley

Publisher: HarperCollins Canada

First Published: January 30, 2024

Book Description from GoodReads: A sweeping multi-generational story about motherhood, race and secrets in the lives of three women, perfect for readers of Brit Bennett’s The Vanishing Half and David Chariandy’s Brother

When 24-year-old Kareela discovers she’s pregnant with a child she isn’t sure she wants, it amplifies her struggle to understand her place in the world as a woman who is half-Black and half-white, yet feels neither.

Her mother, Evelyn, fled to Canada with her husband and their first-born child, Antony, during the politically charged Jamaican Exodus of the 1980s, only to realize they’d come to a place where Black men are viewed with suspicion—a constant and pernicious reality Evelyn watches her husband and son navigate daily.

Years later, in the aftermath of Antony’s murder by the police, Evelyn’s mother-in-law, Violet, moves in, offering young Kareela a link to the Jamaican heritage she has never fully known. Despite Violet’s efforts to help them through their grief, the traumas they carry grow into a web of secrets that threatens the very family they all hold so dear.

Back in the present, Kareela, prompted by fear and uncertainty about the new life she carries, must come to terms with the mysteries surrounding her family’s past and the need to make sense of both her identity and her future.

Weaving the women’s stories across multiple timelines, We Rip the World Apart reveals the ways that simple choices, made in the heat of the moment and with the best of intentions, can have deeper repercussions than could ever have been imagined, especially when people remain silent.