Hi, all:
I bring you a book by an author new to me, but one that I will follow in the future.
The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey
England, 1979. Vincent, Lawrence and William are the last remaining residents of a secluded New Forest home, part of the government’s Sycamore Scheme. Every day, the triplets do their chores, play their games and take their medicine, under the watchful eyes of three mothers: Mother Morning, Mother Afternoon and Mother Night.
Their nightmares are recorded in The Book of Dreams.
Their lessons are taken from The Book of Knowledge.
And their sins are reported in The Book of Guilt.
All the boys want is to be sent to the Big House in Margate, where they imagine a life of sun, sea and fairground rides. But, as the government looks to shut down the Sycamore Homes, the triplets begin to question everything they have been told.
Gradually surrendering its dark secrets, The Book of Guilt is a profoundly unnerving exploration of belonging in a world where some lives are valued less than others.
About the author:
Catherine Chidgey (born 8 April 1970) is a New Zealand novelist, short-story writer and university lecturer. She has published eight novels. Her honours include the inaugural Prize in Modern Letters;the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship to Menton, France; Best First Book at both the New Zealand Book Awards and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (South East Asia and Pacific Region); the Acorn Foundation Fiction Prize at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards on two occasions; and the Janet Frame Fiction Prize.
My review:
I discovered this book thanks to NetGalley, and I went ahead and bought it when it was published.
I had never read any books by Catherine Chidgey before, but the description of this book intrigued me enormously, and it lived up to my expectations.
This book is set in a somewhat dystopian parallel historical universe, as it takes place in the UK, most of it in 1979, but there are important changes in the situation and history of the XX century we are familiar with. WWII in this novel didn’t end with clear winners and losers. Instead, there was an agreement between both sides that changed the political situation, but not only that. One of the important things that changed was the sharing of the “research” and the conclusions of the “experiments” that took place in the concentration camps, resulting in some scientific advancements like the discovery of DNA in the late 1930s, and there are other unseen and unexpected consequences that readers discover in the book.
The story is told from three different points of view, clearly marked and differentiated. The first one, narrated in the first person, is that of Vincent, a teenager and one of a triplet of orphaned brothers who always dress in the same colour to avoid confusing the people taking care of them. They live in a peculiar orphanage, where three “mothers” (one for the morning, one for the afternoon, and one for the night) look after them. The orphanage is isolated, and they have only very limited contact with the outside world. They follow pretty rigid routines: there is a Book of Dreams, where Morning Mother records their dreams every morning; they receive their education from reading and learning the Book of Knowledge, a children’s encyclopedia with a missing page; and if they do anything wrong, that is recorded in the Book of Guilt, which gives name to the novel. The novel is peppered with fragments from the Book of Knowledge (the author mentions the sources she consulted in a section at the end), and also with some descriptions of the children’s dreams and their wrongdoings.
The three children are fighting an unnamed illness (“a bug”), the mothers also record their symptoms regularly, and they are visited by a kind and elderly doctor who adjusts their medication according to their symptoms. The three brothers (Vincent, William, and Lawrence) are the only three children left now in the orphanage, as the children who recover are sent to Margate, where they can enjoy the seaside resort, with all it has to offer, and live together in a big house.
Changes in the government result in changes in their situation, such as the possibility of going on errands to a nearby town, and even bigger changes that are in the planning as we are introduced to the story.
The second point of view belongs to Nancy, a girl who lives with her parents, but her life is also isolated, as they don’t allow her to mix with anybody, and there are secrets she cannot grasp.
The third point of view, narrated in the third person like Nancy’s, belongs to the Minister of Loneliness, a married woman focused on her career who is given a mission by the female Prime Minister: to dismantle the homes and try to place all the remaining children with families. She comes into contact with the triplets and ends up becoming involved beyond the call of political duty.
The novel is divided into three parts, each named after one of the books the children’s lives revolve around, and it reminded me of a book by Ishiguro I read a while ago, and I loved: Never Let Me Go. The writing style is very different, though, and I won’t go into details about both plots to avoid spoilers. Those who read this one and have read the other one (which I recommend as well) can make their own minds up.
Readers from the UK will find references to a variety of events TV programmes, products, places, famous people, and even pretty well-known news items that will sound familiar. As mentioned, the author includes a note on the sources she consulted and was inspired by, and that might help join the dots for other readers.
I enjoyed the different narrators and trying to work out how they might interconnect. Also, I am a fan of unreliable narrators, and, for different reasons and in different ways, several (or even all) the narrators might be considered unreliable here. It is a novel that brings up interesting questions, as novels set in parallel historical universes tend to do. “Could something like that happen here and now?” is one of the questions most people will ask themselves. I will leave it to each reader to decide, but for me at least, it is not unthinkable.
A fascinating story, full of intriguing ideas and with characters who are unusual, complex, and morally ambiguous, so, pretty much like most of us. Judging by this novel, I will follow with interest this author’s work in the future.
Thanks to all of you for your ongoing support, for visiting, liking, sharing, and commenting. And, of course, Merry Christmas! Have a lovely holiday season, and let’s hope 2026 is much kinder and brighter for all.
And I thought I’d leave you with a Catalan Christmas Carroll, that many of you might have heard in other languages as well. A friend suggested I dedicate a post to the Catalan language, but I haven’t been organised enough to do that yet. Let’s make this a little introduction to it. Oh, and pay attention to the background. It’s el Palau de la Música Catalana, a fabulous building I recommend you visit if you come to Barcelona. It’s not by Gaudí, but the architect was a contemporary of his, and pretty famous as well, Lluís Domènech i Montaner.
Just Olga 