No Matter Our Wreckage

Memoir about online grooming and inter-generational trauma

Content warning: online grooming, child sexual abuse, emotional abuse, trauma, death, grief

2020 was not a good year for book releases. During the before-times, when someone has a book published, you could reasonably expect that they would do some local events and, if they were lucky, some interstate events to discuss the book, sell the book and meet readers to have their copies signed. Unfortunately for writers, in these uncertain times book events are often limited or cancelled altogether by social distancing restrictions. Some authors flexibly promoted their book through livestream events, but they are tricky to set up and you don’t have the opportunity to sell copies at the door. Although restrictions had eased in September last year, my at-the-time undiagnosed voice issues meant that I was reluctant to attend even the smallest events. I ended up buying a copy of this book by paying the author via PayPal and collecting my signed copy from her letterbox.

“No Matter Our Wreckage” by Gemma Carey is a memoir about the death of Gemma’s mother and about being groomed online and sexually abused as a child. Although aware of the abuse, Gemma’s mother never spoke to her about it and Gemma was left to take the extraordinary action of reporting the abuser to police alone at the age of 16. In the wake of her mother’s death, Gemma asks herself the question she was never able to ask her mother directly: why didn’t her mother stop the abuse? Using her skills honed in her career as an academic, Gemma forensically researches her family history to find answers to why her otherwise privileged upbringing left her so vulnerable to and unprotected against abuse.

This is a fearless book. To write so frankly about your experiences, let alone about your family, takes guts and Carey has guts in spades. Growing up in a family where things were kept secret, Carey’s decision to throw open the doors and air out her family’s trauma is not just an act of defiance against a culture of silence but a commitment to breaking a cycle. Similarly to Caroline Baum, Carey explores how a seemingly well-to-do family can nevertheless foster an unshakable sense of loneliness in the context of inter-generational trauma. Just before I read this book, I had watched a TV series called “Patrick Melrose” which is about a man addicted to drugs who struggles to deal with being sexually abused as a child. The series is excellently done, and the character Patrick is played by a compelling Benedict Cumberbatch, but the part I couldn’t understand was why Patrick’s mother didn’t protect him from the abuse. Carey’s book answers this question. Although the chapters about Carey’s research into her own family’s secrets are incredibly confronting, what she finds goes a long way towards better understanding her mother and making peace with what was left unsaid before death.

One of the most interesting parts of this memoir was Carey’s writing about the abuser. As easy as it is to assume that an abuser is an obviously scary stereotypical bad guy, the reality is that abusers are often otherwise ordinary and unimpressive people who use extreme manipulation as a tool over time to get what they want. Carey provides a nuanced, objective view of a man whose life and already poor mental health are made even worse by his actions. Comparing her own life trajectory to his, Carey examines how factors other than class can leave a person vulnerable to abuse. From a legal perspective, Carey’s case is very interesting as one of the earliest matters prosecuted in Australia involving the use of the internet to groom a child, and provides a first-hand perspective about one of the dangers of being online. It was also really interesting to compare Carey’s experience of the court system with author Bri Lee‘s experience, including the abuser’s rationale for pleading the way he did.

This is a challenging book that refuses to simplify serious issues and instead faces them head-on in all their complexity.