The Book of guilt by Catherine Chidgey

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✦ BLURB ✦

Morning, afternoon, night.

The mothers are always watching.

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 dress in their assigned colours; yellow for Vincent, green for Lawrence and red for William. They do their chores, play their games and take their medicine while 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.

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✶ 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.

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✶ 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.

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✦ 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.

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✧ VIBE CHECK ✧

A colour palette: washed-out primaries (institutional yellow, grass-stained green, rusted red)
A soundtrack: dissonant strings, muffled breathing, the tick of a metronome
A season: late winter - still, stark, and waiting for something to break
A mood: claustrophobic, fractured, quietly furious
A scent: hospital antiseptic and wet concrete

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★ TAROT CARD PULLED ★

Seven of Swords (Nightfall Tarot). The figure on this card moves stealthily through the dark, cloaked in uncertainty, glancing back over their shoulder. It mirrors the boys’ slow, risky questioning - their need to navigate lies and find slivers of truth without being caught. This card speaks to secrecy, strategy, and survival - all central to this unsettling, unforgettable story.