The Probability of Everything

Kemi Carter is 11-years-old and is facing the few days before an asteroid hits the earth ending life as she knows it. Her family, including her parents, her 17-month-old sister, Lola, and the soon-to-be born sister, “Z”, recently moved into the Pineview area of Elderton, which is considered the better part of the town. Although there is hope to make a better life, the newly discovered asteroid, AMPLUS-68, is slowly moving in to take it all away. Kemi’s scientific mind works to try and make sense of the approaching asteroid, but she knows it is inevitable and looks for a way to leave a legacy for possible future generations by creating a time capsule of her family’s favourite things.

With the asteroid looming, Kemi and Lo were to spend some time at Aunt Miriam’s house while Kemi’s parents “got things together”. Aunt Miriam’s is a busy place as she and Uncle Steve have three children and a dog, but Kemi has always felt safe there. With only four days until the asteroid hits earth, Kemi continues to think about life and those things that are most important. Eventually, Kemi’s entire family is staying at Aunt Miriam’s house, and even their grandma is there, speaking in her native Yoruba language and making comfort food like Garri.

Kemi communicates with her schoolmate friend, Dia, to let her know how things are going. Most kids at school think that Kemi and Dia are friends because they’re the different kids at Pineview, but it’s really because they just like each other. Kemi and Dia are two of the very few ethnically diverse students in Pineview Elementary’s mostly white student body, but that fact won’t stop them from becoming their best selves. Dia is still going to school despite that impending asteroid, and Kemi wants to go too, but her mom wants the family to be together before the end of the world, and so she tells Kemi to stay home.

The final day arrives, the day that the asteroid is to hit earth and end everything for Kemi and her family. It is at this time that Kemi reveals to the reader how she witnessed her father’s being shot in their own house. Further, it is suggested that the shooting was racially motivated and brings the Black Lives Matter movement to the forefront. The asteroid and the countdown until the end of life is actually the day of her father’s funeral. For Kemi, the day does signify the end of life as she knows it, and she works through her feelings to be able to accept the loss of her father and move ahead in life without him.

The Probability of Everything provides the reader with an interesting 11-year-old’s point of view. Through a mix of standard text and Kemi’s “handwriting in her notebook”, the reader sees how Kemi negotiates the trauma of witnessing her father’s death, potentially experiencing racial hatred, and finding her way forward. Upon first reading, the real story is not apparent. However, by the end of the text, the weightier issues surface, and the various hints peppered through the story become clear. The final pages list resources for readers that might experience hate crimes and also anti-racism links. This novel would be appropriate for readers that enjoy mystery-type narratives that require suspended belief until the very end.

Editor’s Note: The Probability of Everything was the winner of the 2023 Governor General’s Literary Award for Young People’s Literature – Text.