The Book of Guilt

An extended meditation on what makes us human. It is creepy and very, very readable.

Gavin Williams, Matilda Bookshop

Written with insight and brio, deftly balancing darkness and light, depth and pace. Set in its own distinctive time and space. A compulsively readable story that raises profound questions not only about the power of the state to dehumanise parts of our society but about our complicity in that power, the doublethink that permits us simultaneously to know a truth and not know it, to see and somehow contrive not to believe, dehumanising us in its turn.

Clare Clark, The Guardian

Chidgey masterfully blends speculative fiction with philosophical insight, crafting a narrative that questions the very fabric of humanity. Mary Shelley would be proud.

Stefen Brazulaitis, Books+Publishing

Riveting reading and, disturbing as its shadowy undertone of evil is, entirely credible.

Anne Green, Good Reading Magazine

No words. A perfect book. A real masterclass in writing, plot deliverance and character development. Moving and magnificent, this was something I'll remember for a very long time.

pagesofachilles

If you take one book recommendation from me, let it be this one. Another 5-star read. Thank you and congratulations on such a fantastic book.

Just One More Book NZ

This is a compelling and terrifying novel whose alternative history engages chillingly with current possibilities. No one writes children better that Chidgey. She exactly gets their experimental cruelty and related innocence as they attempt to piece their world together.

Elizabeth Cook, author of LUX

A chilling and beautifully written novel set in an alternative 1979 England, following identical triplets raised in a state-run care home who begin to uncover disturbing truths about the world around them. Unsettling, compelling and easily one of my top reads this year.

Dasha, Gleebooks Dulwich Hill

A haunting and thought-provoking tale that takes you on an eerie journey full of unexpected twists and turns. Chidgey weaves a mesmerising, unsettling story of control, identity and ethics that will keep you captivated till the very end!

Simone, Dymocks

A future classic from one of the most intriguing, inventive and compelling writers of our time. What a book. It is just jaw-droppingly breathtaking...She is such an attentive, exacting and careful writer and I think one of the best in the world today.

Radio NZ

It's early, but we're calling it: this is the book of the year.

The Spinoff

We are lucky to have a writer like Chidgey who can throw open history, reshape it, and spin a compelling, sparkling narrative that not only entertains but acts as a warning.’ ‘Chidgey’s masterful hand is sure and deliberate, the foreboding story unfolds without a false note.

Stephanie Johnson, Aotearoa New Zealand Review of Books

The tension between the ordinariness of the society the novel inhabits and the horrors at its heart lends the proceedings a disquieting charge. The novel's real focus is the capacity of societies to treat certain groups as less than human , thus placing them outside the circle of moral concern, and the complicity of ordinary people in that process. This very impressive novel makes uncomfortably clear, not only are these attitudes difficult to shift, but societies and individuals would mostly rather ignore their history than confront the truth of the past.

James Bradley, The Saturday Paper

Chidgey's luxurious, unhurried prose stokes tension in s compulsive thriller with macabre hints at historical cases of scandalous cover-ups, unprincipled drug trials, eugenics and ethnic cleansing, genetic experimentations. The revelations exposed in the Book of Guilt are collective and shaming. Above all the novel is a powerful recreation of an off-kilter Britain at the end of the 1970s - looking back at the horrors of the second world war with the talons of the worst aspects of Thatcherism about to be unleashed. It feels scarily momentous.

Catherine Taylor, The Observer

Dark, tangled and compelling novel

Julian Novitz, The Conversation

A sinister thriller, a critique of the Thatcher government and a meditation on who matters most in society.

Steph, Book of the Month, Better Read Than Dead