Catherine Chidgey
Te Herenga Waka University Press
Otago Daily Times, June 28th 2025
The disquiet at the heart of The Book of Guilt crystalises in a single, carefully placed pronoun in its opening sentence: “Before I knew what I was, I lived with my brothers in a grand old house in the heart of the New Forest.”
The authorial ‘I’, Vincent, is one of identical triplets who have spent their first thirteen years of life in Captain Scott House, part of a string of orphanages known as Sycamore Homes. Established after WWII, they care for immunologically-compromised children, many from multiple births, whose fragile health necessitates their isolation from the outside world. Over the years, however, the number of wards has dwindled until by 1979, when the story is set, Vincent and his brothers have Scott House to themselves, their companions having either succumbed to illness or grown strong enough to move to Sycamore’s main facility in the seaside Idyll of Margate. Or so they believe, although it is evident from those haunting first words that things are not what they seem.
The unease is heightened as we discover the small but significant ways the novel’s time-line diverges from our own, including the rapid advancement of biomedical research after WWI, and a premature end to WWII that allowed German researchers to share their wartime discoveries (and their eugenic shadows) with the world. What and how this relates to the Sycamore children is revealed as the book progresses, raising complex questions about biomedical ethics, identity, justice and retribution.
Such details may feel like spoilers for a book that derives much of its impact from the unexpected turns of the plot, but all are disclosed in the first chapter and add to rather than detract from, the dramatic tension. Which scenario, one wonders, are we dealing with: Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go or Levin’s The Boys from Brazil? The answer is ‘both’ and ‘neither,’ and the ways in which the story plays with and subverts the expectations of these associations adds to its depth and complexity.
Events are described from perspective of three characters whose lives converge as the novel progresses. Vincent is the novel’s primary narrator, his first-person memories tinged with premonitions from his older self. The second, Nancy, lives with her parents 100 miles from Scott House. Forbidden to leave the house even for school and hidden away whenever anybody visits, her upbringing is as sequestered as Vincent’s and, as an only child, even lonelier. Finally, there is Sylvia, Minister for Loneliness in the newly-elected Conservative government. Tasked with dis-establishing the Sycamore Homes, whose genesis and purpose she is (almost) fully aware of, her attempts to find families for the triplets has profound consequences for all.
The novel structure is also tripartite, its sections named after the books that define Vincent and his brothers’ lives (The Book of Dreams, the Book of Knowledge and the titular Book of Guilt) and mirroring their journey from innocence to understanding. The moral and ethical questions it raises implicate the reader as much as the protagonists in the responsibility that accompanies that awareness.