Never Let Me Go meets Zone of Interest.
A creepy, compelling novel that takes place in a version of our world where some lives are valued less than others. It will shock you with each new revelation.

Set in an alternative version of the UK in 1979, The Book of Guilt tells the story of 13-year-old triplets Vincent, Lawrence and William, who have grown up in a ‘Sycamore Home’. They are the last remaining children in this particular Home and are cared for by three women named according to their daily shifts- Mother Morning, Mother Afternoon and Mother Night. Each day they must take medicine to protect themselves from The Bug – an illness that can assume many different forms, and to which many of their friends have succumbed. Those boys lucky enough to beat The Bug are allowed to move to the Big House in coastal Margate – a destination of mythical proportions that boasts the spectacular amusement park Dreamland; a reward desired by every child.

Now that a new government has come to power, all these children’s homes are to be closed and the children placed in the community … which is making the community nervous.

Questions haunt the boys- Why are their dreams recorded each morning in The Book of Dreams? Why does the library comprise only eight books – a set of outdated children’s encyclopaedias called The Book of Knowledge? Why is the boys’ every misdeed written up in a ledger known as The Book of Guilt? And why are all three brothers dreaming of the same skinny girl running through a forest?

In London, a newly appointed cabinet minister assumes her role as Minister of Loneliness and is charged with facilitating the boys’ integration into appropriate families.

Elsewhere, in Exeter, Nancy lives a quiet life with her parents, who have never let her leave the house since her birth. Her father painstakingly constructs a model village that threatens to overtake the entire sitting room. Gradually, terribly, her life intersects with that of the triplets’, culminating in the revelation of secrets that will rock the children to their core.

Catherine Chidgey is a multiple award-winner whose novels have achieved international acclaim. The Axeman’s Carnival was a number one bestseller in her native New Zealand, as was her previous novel Pet. Remote Sympathy was shortlisted for the Dublin Literary Award and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Her debut, In a Fishbone Church, won won Best First Book at both the New Zealand Book Awards and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize (South-East Asia and South Pacific region). It also won the Betty Trask Award and was longlisted for the Orange Prize. Her second novel, Golden Deeds, was a Notable Book of the Year in the New York Times Book Review and a Best Book in the LA Times. The Axeman’s Carnival and The Wish Child both won the Jann Medlicott Acorn Prize for Fiction – New Zealand’s most prestigious literary award. Other honours include the Prize in Modern Letters, the Katherine Mansfield Award, the Katherine Mansfield Fellowship, the Janet Frame Fiction Prize, and the Nielsen Independent New Zealand Bestseller award. Catherine Chidgey lives in Ngaruawahia and lectures in Creative Writing at the University of Waikato.