Set in an alternative 1970s England, three brothers (triplets) are living in a home for boys that's population is dwindling. They are sickly and longing to get well enough to go to Margate, an idyllic seaside town that lives vividly in their imaginations. Of course, all is not as it seems. As the story unfolds - mostly through the eyes of the children - the world in which they live gets darker and darker. A biting tale of what happens to a society in which government-sanctioned "othering" occurs and the extent to which we are destined by our nature or our nurture. Atmospheric, dark yet hopeful.

This book fascinates from the start. What exactly is going on with the boys in the big house in the 70s? Why are their dreams so important? And what are the multiple medications they get trying to heal?
In ‘The Book of Guilt’ Catherine Chidgey creates an original, heartbreaking and terrifying alternate reality that keeps you deeply engrossed till the end. Highly recommended!
Thank you John Murray and Netgalley UK for the ARC.

Vincent, Lawrence and William are triplets. They live in a big house with three mothers: Mother Morning, Mother Afternoon and Mother Night. There used to be more boys, but they all got lucky. They were allowed to go to Margate, where they are living their best lives. The brothers learn from the Book of Knowledge; their dreams are written down in the Book of Dreams, and their misdeeds in the Book of Guilt. They live a secluded life, but this is about to change. They are allowed to go to the village to run errands, but the villagers look at them strangely and talk about them behind their backs. Then girls who live in a similar house to them start visiting to help them develop their social skills. However, one of the girls seems to know more about their lives.

I found the premise of the book intriguing. I liked the eerie atmosphere and the sense of foreboding. However, the book takes far too long to get anywhere. The story meanders and the pace is extremely slow. It took ages for the secrets to unfold, to the point where I almost lost interest. Nevertheless, I figured out most of the secrets myself; I had plenty of time to think about them while not much was happening. I never felt the urge to put the book up and read. In fact, I had to force myself to continue reading. I also could not connect with any of the characters. They all felt distant.

Everything was there to make this book a compelling and engaging read. I can see why it might resonate with other readers. But for me, something was lacking — a spark that would have kept me glued to the pages. However, the slow pacing and repetitive storytelling bored me more than it entertained me.

Catherine Chidgey has to be one of the most talented writers of today, her range, attention detail and beautiful writing style leaves me struggling to find another author comparable. From Nazi Germany to domestic abuse through the eyes of a bird, her novels are so diverse, captivating and a joy to read. The Book of Guilt might just be my favourite book of hers to date; a definite contender for best book of 2025.

The book is set in the UK in 1979 and Chidgey captures the history of this time brilliantly. William, Lawrence and Vincent are triplets and the last remaining residents of a Home that was part of the governments Sycamore Scheme. They are care for by three women, Mother Morning, Mother Afternoon and Mother Night. The boys do their chores, study a book where all their knowledge comes from, play and take their daily medicine and every morning their dreams are religiously recorded as are their sins. There are strong Never Let Me Go vibes from the setting and scenario the boys live in as we learn more about them, the scheme, their hopes and wishes and as the book progresses the secret of the scheme and their living set up is revealed.
From about the half way point, this book was impossible to put down. I was horrified and beguiled in equal measure. It is impossible to say too much without spoilers but this book captivated me from beginning to end. Could not recommend more.

Beholdeth my fav book of the year so far!! Wow what a book!

This is a dystopian/thriller set in the late 70s, we are quickly introduced to Vincent, William and Lawrence, triplet boys who live at Captain Scott House and are part of the Sycamore Program …. But just what is the Sycamore Program??

The writing kept me engaged throughout, early on it gave “Never Let Me Go” vibes however - controversial as it may be - I found The Book of Guilt much more intriguing and in my opinion better executed than NLMG.

Easily a 5⭐️ read and has piqued my interest in thr authors other work altho I have read this is slightly left field for her.

'The Book Of Guilt' is set in an alternative England in 1979. The triplets Vincent, Lawrence and William are the last residents of a mansion which is part of the Sycamore Scheme. They are cared for by Mother Morning, Mother Afternoon and Mother Night. Their dreams are being recorded daily in the Book of Dreams, they are being educated according to the (outdated) Book of Knowledge and any wrongdoings are recorded in the Book of Guilt. The Governmet is planning to abolish the scheme and put the remaining residents of all the houses into families. The boys are being eased into this with a resocialisation scheme by meeting girls from another house. But they start to become suspicious of what is really going on.
You get a very eerie and uncomfortable feeling reading this novel and it certainly has 'Never Let Me Go ' vibes. Lots of questions arise but everything becomes clear ( with some twists) in the end. It is a brilliant and captivating read and I would highly recommend it!
Many thanks to NetGalley and John Murray Press for the ARC!

Last year I read Pet and was obsessed so when I heard she had a new one coming out I just knew it was a must read but then I read the blurb and did wonder if it would be my sort of book. I went in blind not having read any reviews and after a couple of chapters i was hooked, what on earth was I reading, where is this taking me ??!!
It's a hard one to review without giving away spoilers but you find yourself in an alternative 1979 England following a set of triplets living in a mansion which is part of the government's sycamore scheme.. Yes, weird comes to mind ! I don't want to say much more other than it's chilling, disturbing, thought provoking and also nostalgic (if you grew up in that era you will see mentions of Thatcher, Jim'll fix it, the dreamland of margate!).
One of the most unique original books I have read in a very long time , this woman can write !
Cannot wait to see what she comes up with next as her work is so diverse.

This is the first book I have read from this author and not one I would have picked up normally. I chose it based on a recommendation and I’m glad I did.

A slow start, this book does pick up in the second half and I found I was racing through as I wanted to find out what happened.

Triplets Vincent, William, and Lawrence live in a Sycamore Home, one of the last of a government run scheme. Looked after by three ‘Mothers’ they learn from an outdated book of knowledge, have their dreams recorded every morning and have their bad behaviour recorded in the book of guilt. They have dreams of going to Margate as many of the other children have done, enticed by the glossy brochure promising fun.
Outcast by the community it’s clear something isn’t right.
Meanwhile, Nancy is confined to her house with her parents, and there’s something strange going on.

As the book progresses, the sinister nature of these homes comes to light and there’s an uncomfortable, unsettling feeling throughout.

This is a well written book and despite the slow start it’s worth sticking with.

3.5 stars rounded to 3.

My first Catherine Chidgey book and it did not disappoint!! There is so much to unpack in this read, and perfect (if youre like me) for weird, wtf is happening book lovers.

I had no idea what was going to happen, and the story unravelled perfectly, the author definitely knows how to keep you hanging and desperate to start the next chapter. It also feels way too real in our day and age because I feel like this is a possibility with the use of AI etc.

A thrilling read that I’m adding to my 5 star list of 2025!

A period Never Let Me Go, in an alternative post-WWII world.

I could tell from the first pages that was what this was. It was dark, reading snippets of a different timeline, and gradually seeing events revealed for what they were.

In 1979, in a decrepit yet grand house, part of something called the 'Sycamore Scheme', identical triplets Vincent, Lawrence and William are taught from the Book of Knowledge each day, by Mothers Morning, Afternoon and Night. When they do wrong, their misdemeanours are recorded in the Book of Guilt. Each morning they are asked about their dreams, recorded religiously in the Book of Dreams. The boys daytime dreams revolve around finding the Margate magazine on their beds - to let them know it's their turn to be sent to Margate, by their descriptions a playground of funfair rides and candy floss like something out of Pinocchio...

Living alone as every other child has left already, Vincent guides us through their days, the wannabee vet Lawrence and slightly sadistic William, the new days when the boys meet girls from a similar Sycamore Home. They need socialising as the Homes are soon to close and families found for them all... though the boys already know the outside world fears them when they go out on small errands. Just who and what are they, and why do they inspire such reactions?

Their Spartan lifestyles are brutal - stickle bricks and a jigsaw to play with, rote learning and ethics lessons, gardening and bed making - for 13 year olds this can't last forever.

Their age makes a difference to the story, as the boys are hitting adolescence as well as a turning point in their understanding of their lives and situation. And there's a storyline running alongside the triplets of Nancy, herself living with two loving parents and seemingly unconnected to their narrative - the threads bringing the two stories together are pulled gently and took my breath away as realisation came to me on what Chidgey had created.

Really quite a scary concept, this. But so close to what could be real. And told with great assuredness and talent. The metaphors and comparison abound in this, the horror is all too clear, and it's a book I won't forget quickly.

Very confident writing, terrifying vision, powerful messages and ending.

With thanks to Netgalley for providing a sample reading copy.

My thoughts —From the very first page to the final sentence, I couldn’t put this book down. It captivated, enthralled, and shocked me right through to the end.

“Come to Margate, you will have the best time.” That line hit home. As someone who knows Margate well and has recently visited, and who also knows the New Forest intimately, the setting felt vivid and immersive—an unforgettable sensory experience that added so much to the story.

But let’s talk about the book itself—wow. You’ll carry these three boys in your heart long after the final page. Raised in a strange, secluded institution, they are cared for by three women: Mother Morning, Mother Afternoon, and Mother Night. Each day, they read from the Book of Knowledge, confess their dreams upon waking, and when they misbehave, their sins are recorded in the Book of Guilt.

Prescribed meditations and treatments by the mysterious Dr. Roach are meant to “keep the bugs away”—but do the boys even have bugs? That’s just one of the many unsettling questions that slowly surface.

Everything begins to shift when they meet three girls during a socialisation event. For the first time, they begin to question their lives, their caretakers, and the truths they’ve been told. As the government moves to shut down homes like theirs, the cracks widen and the lies unravel.

This is an astonishing read—one that I won’t spoil further because I want you to experience it yourself. This author is fast becoming a favourite of mine; this is the third novel I’ve read, and once again, I’m completely wowed.

From the outset, there is a disquiet to this story; everything is not as it seems. Your curiosity compels you to read on. You begin to suspect that the truth may be a bit more chilling than you first thought, you read on to satisfy yourself this couldn’t possibly be the case. When the full realisation hits you, it’s too late, you can’t look away.

Catherine Chidgey is a masterful story teller, her ability to create unease from the ‘unsaid’ is superb. What appears an ordinary and monotonous existence is broken away to reveal a dark and disturbing dystopia.

But The Book of Guilt is so much more than a compelling dystopian tale. It forces you to keep looking, to be complicit. It shows you what happens when people refuse to acknowledge what is occurring around them and when the worst happens - how they try and justify their inertia. It looks at the impact of trauma, it asks how important our origins are and the consequences of not knowing your true origins. It is a book that will keep you questioning long after you’ve finished it.

I can’t seem to find the right adjectives to do this book justice. It blew me away. It is most definitely one of the stand out books of this year.

The Book of Guilt is a dystopian novel set in 1970's England. It centres around 13 year old triplet boys, Vincent, William and Lawrence who are the last children living in a children’s home which is run by 3 mothers, Mother Morning, Mother Afternoon, and Mother Night who record their dreams and wrongdoings in books and teach them from the book of knowledge.

This is the first book I have read from this author and I will be seeking out more novels as I found this book to be intriguing, It is well written with richly developed characters and an imaginative well paced plot.

Acclaimed writer Catherine Chidgey returns with a chilling novel about reworking the past to understand the present. She describes a reimagined 1970s England, and how three triplets and a young girl are eking out an existence. The backdrop is the Captain Scott Home for Boys, where the male triplets live, and the novel highlights what happens when they start to question their identities. The novel is frightening and sadly relevant in today's world. Chidgey is a phenomenal writer of mood and uneasiness. She captures the unsettling nature of identities shaped by outside influences (trying to be vague so as not to spoil anything). I can see this being a contender for the Booker Prize in 2025. This is another winner from John Murray Press.

✶ PRE-READING ✶
I was instantly drawn to the unsettling premise: triplets raised in an institutional experiment, shadowed by surveillance and control. I expected something eerie and allegorical, maybe with notes of Never Let Me Go or Lord of the Flies, and was intrigued by how a story so regimented would unravel. I was also curious to see how the narrative voice would handle the triple perspective.

✶ POST-READING ✶
What a slow, creeping dread this book evokes. It’s a carefully built world of rules, rewards, and illusions, and watching it fall apart is deeply compelling. Each of the boys is shaped by fear and ritual, yet they’re more distinct than you'd think - their colours, their quirks, their patterns of thought all start to feel familiar, then foreign, then dangerous. The slow unravelling of their world, and our understanding of what's been happening, is terrifying. There's one plot point where we'll all have known something wasn't right, but the reveal of exactly what's happening there is really upsetting.

The gradual convergence of three threads is very well done - it’s not just a twisty plot, it’s a carefully controlled unravelling. The boys don’t just question what they’ve been told; they begin to question why they believed it. The most haunting parts are not the punishments or the surveillance, but the way loyalty is weaponised, and love is trained like a reflex.

✦ RECOMMENDATIONS ✦
Book: Only Ever Yours by Louise O’Neill - for another take on institutionalised upbringing and indoctrination, especially with its performative ‘purity’ and slow psychological breakdown.
TV/Film: The Prisoner (1967) - for its atmosphere of surreal control, enforced roles, and the haunting question of escape versus compliance.

This is Catherine Chidgey at her creepy, shocking best. I loved it. More stars required for this one.

Vincent, William and Lawrence live at Captain Scott, a Sycamore Home named for the heroic explorer, in the New Forest where they are cared for by Mother Morning, Mother Afternoon and Mother Night. They read every day from the Book of Knowledge, they tell their dreams when they wake to Mother Morning and if they behave badly their sins are recorded in the Book of Guilt.

The boys are the only ones left now, all the others having gone to Margate to live at The Big House and play all day at Dreamland. If Vincent could only work out what they need to do to get there ... but they are often ill, having to take medication every day to keep The Bug at bay. But they will never get to Margate if the dream they share will not stop coming because the dream is of a girl and there is blood in the dream. Vincent is afraid it means they will stay at Captain Scott forever.

Set in an alternate Britain, the plight of the triplets is interspersed with that of Nancy, who lives with her parents but has never gone out and must hide in the wardrobe when visitors come. But as Nancy gets older the question of why she is not allowed out becomes more insistent in her mind and when a party doesn't have the effect she had been promised, Nancy has had enough.

I can't possibly pile enough praise on The Book of Guilt. Catherine Chidgey does creepy and horrifying with the lightest of touches. The tension builds and builds throughout this book to reach an explosive culmination and just when you think the strangeness is over she tags on another surprise at the end.

I loved Axeman's Carnival; I loved Pet more; and this blows both of them out of the water. Superb writing, fantastic plot, great characters. Creepy to the max and jaw droppingly horrifying when you realise exactly what's going on. It gave me shivers.

Very highly recommended for fans of Chidgey or just someone who, like me, finds a book where they are desperate to know what happens but does not want it to end. I had to ration myself because I knew how bereft I'd feel once I'd finished. Definitely one to read again.

Thankyou very much to Netgalley and John Murray Press for the advance review copy. Very much appreciated.

It is 1979. Vincent and his fellow triplets Lawrence and William live in the New Forest in a Sycamore Home, one of a network of government-funded children’s homes. They have a comfortingly monotonous routine, cared for by three ‘mothers’, one for the morning, one for the afternoon, and one for the night. A doctor visits and treats their varied medical symptoms, all attributed to the mysterious Bug.

Their days are framed by the Book of Dreams, where their memories of dreams on waking are recorded, the Book of Knowledge, an encyclopedia which forms the basis of their education, and the dreaded Book of Guilt, where their misdeeds are detailed.

However, change appears to be in the air. There used to be many other boys in residence, but now the triplets are the only ones left. The other boys have ‘gone to Margate’ which is the ultimate aspiration of all of them, exemplified by a holiday brochure in glorious colour left under the pillow of the chosen.

Vincent and his brothers are now allowed to go out for occasional errands with the mothers – where they encounter the beguiling but frightening New Forest ponies, and are viewed by the local people much as they view the ponies.

In another town, a young girl, Nancy, lives with her parents. She has an apparently normal life at home. She watches TV and plays with her father’s lovingly constructed model railway, but she is never allowed to leave the house or be seen by strangers. Nancy is just becoming aware that something is not right and is beginning to ask questions.

A third strand of the story follows the Minister of Loneliness, a politician who oversees the Sycamore Homes. For her, children like Vincent are a problem and a threat to her ambitions.

I’m about the same age as Vincent and Nancy, so the 1970s childhood portrayed in The Book of Guilt included much that I remember, as well as a few things I’d forgotten (Stickle Bricks!). But there are disconcerting hints that this is a darkly different world from the one we remember. And yet –

The distinctive characters of the triplets and the three mothers are beautifully drawn. This is not the usual story of care home abuse. Their daily lives are punctuated by small treats and apparent kindness. But, much like our rose-tinted memories, and low-budget talking-heads nostalgia TV, this vision of the 1970s is incomplete and conceals much (it can’t be coincidence that Jim’ll Fix It looms large in Nancy’s world).

The prose is pitch-perfect. When the boys make their first tentative attempts at socialising outside the home, their dialogue is just what you’d expect from children of the 1970s, educated in isolation on the literature of the 1950s, sort of Janet and John meets Ask the Family.

It is Vincent’s first-person account that drives the story. Through his naive perceptions the truth about the boys and the Sycamore Homes is gradually revealed until it upends all their lives.

The Book of Guilt is inventive, funny, and devastating. Is it too soon to pick my book of the year?

Dark, dystopian, and deeply unsettling. This powerful novel is both a slow burn and an irresistible page-turner. It raises profound ethical and moral questions about humanity, exposing the grim truths of a society that devalues certain lives. It also explores how crime is never truly buried—how its memory lingers, sending ripples through time and space. The consequences of past wrongs bleed into the present, haunting both individuals and institutions

Richly layered, thought-provoking, and razor-sharp, it’s a timely reflection of the world we live in.

The Book of Guilt was such a good read. It initially felt mysterious as we were introduced to the triplets in the big house where other children used to live alongside them. Who are they? Why are they there? Who are the mothers? The answers to these questions are slowly revealed to us throughout the story, and bring equal amounts of horror and sadness at the tragic story of the boys.
The story raises interesting thoughts and questions about environment and upbringing vs genes, and raises ethical questions, asking how far science would go in the quest for health and longevity.

Catherine Chidgey is an absolute master of building tension. I read Pet last year, which is incredibly different in terms of plot, but similarly draws you in and has you questioning everything. There’s not much I can say without spoilers, but this was such a mysterious, dark and intense novel which unravels into something very sinister.

An alternative 1979 was brought to life with details that made this feel claustrophobically close to reality, recreating that time with an ominous twist. It comments on what lives are worth and how they can be exploited, showing a collective selfishness, fear and detachment working in unison to excuse horrific acts. Absolutely loved this and I’m sure it’ll be getting a lot of mentions from me.

*ad-pr: Thank you to the publisher for the gifted copy!*