The Book of Guilt

In an alternate Britain, the Second World War ended in a 1943 stalemate. British scientists gained access to Nazi genetic research and built it into a state program of their own.

By 1979, the triplets William, Lawrence and Vincent are thirteen and living at Sycamore Homes, a government institution opened in 1944. Three women, whom the boys call their mothers, run the place. The children are among the last raised there and have no contact with the outside world.

The narration moves between three viewpoints: Vincent describing daily life in the home, Nancy, a girl confined to a house she may never leave, and the Minister of Loneliness. The Minister's task is to wind the human-engineering scheme down because of its cost.

The balance shifts when girls from a sister institution arrive. They suggest that the medicine the children take is what makes them ill, not what treats them.

As the program's real purpose comes into view and the government moves to close it, Vincent and the Minister both begin to suspect that the children's lives are being ended along with the funding. The book reads as an unsettling morality tale about state experimentation and who is allowed to matter.