The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey

Catherine Chidgey’s The Book of Guilt is an alternate history played out mainly in a slightly different world of 1970s Britain. It is a book that plays its revelations very close to its chest, letting the readers try and figure things out first through hints and clues. Chidgey builds a sense of both fascination and dread as small details are revealed. And in doing so she explores ideas of prejudice, belonging, connection and ultimately, what it means to be human.

The Book of Guilt centres around triplets Vincent, Lawrence and William who are the last residents at an odd orphanage in Britain in the late 1970s which was part of something called the Sycamore Program. Readers quickly learn that this is an alternative Britain in which Hitler was assassinated in 1943 and the war quickly ended after that with an armistice. It is hinted, that as a result, German wartime medical experiments on prisoners became part of mainstream science and research. Twenty-five years later, these boys are somehow part of that research tradition, although it takes quite a while to find out how.
When the book opens, the British government has decided to shut the Sycamore Program down. The Minister responsible has been charged with closing the Program and finding new homes for the remaining children. Although that proves difficult as the children are not seen as entirely human and have a bad reputation. Meanwhile, in another thread f the story, a teenager called Nancy is kept confined in her family home by her parents.

Much of the book is told from either Vincent or Nancy’s fairly naïve points-of-view. This allows Gidgey to drop hints about what is going on, while building a solid picture of their worlds. She does so in a way that readers understand more than the characters themselves, a technique that increases the tension. The third point of view is that of the Minister, who is caught in a political quagmire while trying to do the right thing by the Sycamore children.

There is plenty to chew on thematically here. Starting with the dehumanisation of prisoners of war and their use for medical research by Nazi doctors. And then just the general use of humans as test subjects, whether or not there is a broader social benefit down the line. But Gidgey also considers broader issues such as nature versus nurture, the treatment of children in institutions more broadly and how people deal with grief.

The Book of Guilt is more than a little reminiscent of Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go, both in its alternate history/retro styling and some of its themes. But Gidgey sets her book apart by exploring a different moral and ethical landscape, with younger, more naïve narrators and broader construction of her world. Gidgey slowly layers her world and the situations in which her characters find themselves into a slow burn thriller with both heart and plenty to think about which builds to a devastative, poignant conclusion.

The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey

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8.0/10