The Book of Guilt

1979 and three boys are living a mundane existence as the final residents in a group home in the New Forest. They're intermittently ill with a bug and have to take medication but otherwise they're enjoying life and waiting till they're well enough to go to a glorious seaside home and spend their days living it up in an amusement park.

Nancy is doted on by her ageing parents who dress her up and treat her like a doll in their home that's overcrowded with mail order junk. She's a virtual prisoner and is never allowed to leave.

Chidgey is a mastermind at subtle chills. Everything is hum drum and pedestrian but underneath all this is an unsettling sense of growing menace as you realise that nothing about these children's lives is wholesome or healthy and that there are undercurrents of darkness. The world we're shown is comforting and familiar but also disturbingly dystopian. It's skilled writing to depict such ordinariness but make it so full of creeping threat. Its a masterclass in subtext and unease. Truly chilling.

This reminded me of Kazuo Ishiguro at his best. The first person narration from the children works well as a device and I felt wholly present in their worlds. The sense of time and place is exquisite and the slightly off kilter late 1970s world works perfectly. Gloriously unsettling.

This is already one of my books of the year for 2025. A treat of a read that I devoured in a couple of days. A definite future classic.

"Come to Margate ,where children can have the time of their lives just being children"

Being a teenager in the 70s and knowing both the New Forest and Margate, the premise of three brothers living in a 'care home' in the Forest and with their desires and hopes of travelling to Margate and visiting the wonders of Dreamland intrigued. Memories of the old theme park still linger to this day!

From the start this was a book that couldn't be put down -it captivated , enthralled and shocked to the very end

Vincent, William and Laurence are identical triplets and have lived in Scott house- named after the ill-fated explorer.- since birth. They are part of the Sycamore project- a government funded scheme to monitor certain children . The boys are cared for by three mothers- Morning , Afternoon and Night Mother. Their actions are monitored and their dreams are recorded each day in a book and any misdemeanours are noted in The Book of Guilt. Other children live in different Sycamore homes; but all is not what it seems. The residents believe that a certain stage they are rehoused to the wonderful world of Margate and life in 'The Big House" .

No spoilers but as the story progresses you are pulled deeper into the mystery that is the children's lives in 1979 ; daily tasks, socialisation days and the possibility of this move to their "Dreamland" Utopia.

Alongside their story, we meet the Minister of Loneliness who is responsible for young people as the Thatcher government decides that the project must end. We also meet a young girl called Nancy- her life is juxtaposed against the three boys.

Having not read the work of Catherine Chidgey, a comparison to other n=books can't be made but this is a 100 per cent page turner- a world was created that was spellbinding. What was the future of the boys? Why were local residents nervous of them? What was their past - why were they part of the Sycamore project? What was the projects goal?

With links to previously dark historical events and the insanity or obsession of supposed 'experts' and governments to create better societies, The Book of Guilt shocks. This is a taut knife-edge thriller but is a cross-genre read - to say any more would be to give the plot away.

Already this is going to be a book that will be a highly recommended read to others. It would be good to say more but to do so would truly spoil a brilliant read.

One of the top reads of 2025 has arrived