Whitcoulls Recommends: The Book of Guilt and The Good Mistress

The Book of Guilt by Catherine Chidgey. Set in England in 1979, identical 13 year old triplets are part of a Government scheme where they’re constantly monitored and medicated. They’re overseen by Mothers Morning, Afternoon and Night who teach them from the Book of Knowledge, keep records in the Book of Dreams, and write up their misdemeanours in The Book of Guilt. There’s a slow, insidious creep to the narrative and when the Minister for Loneliness decides more social interaction would be good for them, they’re sent to visit a family who have secrets and a shocking connection to these boys, as they discover that the world they thought they knew is an entire fiction. From the author of the award winning The Axeman’s Carnival, this is remarkable. 

The Good Mistress by Anne Tiernan. Set in Ireland, this is the story of three women who knew one another as young girls and went on to have very separate lives. Juliet is mourning the loss of her lover, Rory, with whom she’d had a long affair, and who died suddenly; Erica is mourning the loss of her husband, and Maeve mourns the loss of the happy marriage she once had which over time has become increasingly unhappy. They meet up again when Juliet travels from her home in Auckland for Rory’s funeral, and find they need to reconcile the realities of love, betrayal and the limits of forgiveness. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudkin
from News Talks AB.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
Joe McKenzie, Good morning, Hello. I am hearing incredible things
about Catherine Tugy's new book.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Yes, as you might, because it is extraordinary.

Speaker 2 (00:24):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
Yeah, it's called The Book of Guilt and shares the
author of a recent book called The X Men's Carnival,
which was an award winner here and I think this
one will likely be a very strong awards contender as well.
It's set in an alternative England in nineteen seventy nine,
and a lot of that is recognizable to people of
a certain age, I think. But it's a country which

(00:46):
has been radically changed after World War Two, which in
this book ended with Germany and the Allies reaching an
agreement in a compromise which has really affected society. And
a new prime minister's been elected who isn't named, but
I thought bore more than a parson resemblance to Margaret Thatcher.
And the main character is a thirteen year old identical
trips Vincent, William and Lawrence, and much of the stories

(01:09):
told by Vincent. Now they're the only children still living
in a Big Old House where they're part of something
known as the Sycamore Scheme, which was a government initiative
which was prompted by Nazi intelligence from the war, and
they live under the care of three mothers. There's Mother Morning,
Mother Afternoon and Mother Night, who teach them from the
Book of Knowledge. They record their dreams in the Book

(01:32):
of Dreams, and when they're naughty, their misdemeanors are written
down in the Book of Guilt. And these kids suffer
from something which they call the bug, and they're constantly
medicated and wanitored. But what they really really want is
to get well so that they, like all the other
kids that used to live with them in this place,
can move to a place known as the Big House

(01:53):
in Margate, which is a seaside resort in England where
life is perpetually happy for kids, with arcade games and
funfares and treats, and it's all going to be wonderful
if they can just get there. But there's a very slow,
insidious creep to this narrative which hums along under the surface,
and it just gets louder and louder, and you can
tell from the first time it's mentioned that Margate isn't

(02:16):
what they think it is. And I should say that
the cover of this book is brilliant. It's it's an
image from a promotional brochure for Margate back in the day,
and it's of a joyously happy mother and child having
a wonderful time on the beach. The irony is right there.

Speaker 2 (02:31):
She's so original as in't she care? I mean, it
feels to me that it wasn't that long ago that
The X Men's Carnival was released, and yet here is another.

Speaker 3 (02:40):
Well, there's been another in between. She wrote a book, pet,
that's right. She did toes very prolificious and.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
With so many interesting and unique ideas.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
And the mark of a great writer who can tell
such incredibly different.

Speaker 2 (02:52):
Stories and brilliantly written.

Speaker 3 (02:54):
Yeah yeah, really, gosh.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
Okay, really looking forward to that. Now. Tell me about
The Good Mistress by Anne Tannan.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Yeah, Anne, I believe it's an irishwoman living here in
New Zealand, but this book is set almost exclusively in Ireland,
and it's the story of three women who knew each
other back in the day when they were teenagers, Juliet
May and Erica. Juliet has traveled from her home in
Auckland back to Ireland for the funeral of the guy
who was her closest teenage friend, and then he became

(03:22):
her lover. His name's Rory, and he was married to Erica,
who's now the grieving widow. Juliet and Mave back in
the day used to be really close, but Juliette's performance
at Mave's wedding many years ago put paid to that,
and when they meet up again now in the modern day,
they decide they'll try and put all that behind them
and see if they can pick up where they left off.
And I have to say that the interplay between these

(03:44):
women can be quite profound in the way that female
friendships can be. Juliet believed for years that Rory was
the love of her life and one day he will
leave his wife for her, which is the kind of
thing that you often hear in these arrangements. His wife, Erica,
knew that he was playing around, but she didn't know
who with. And one night after his funeral, after drinking

(04:04):
too much, she goes into ryle laptop and finds an
email from a woman with whom he was clearly being intimate,
and she replies to that email, which starts up a correspondence,
and what she doesn't realize is that the woman that
she's emailing is actually just a short walk away in
the same village. So it's quite it's a small town story.

(04:26):
It's about betrayal, it's about love. It's about forgiveness and
how you face yourself in the mirror and figure out
how you got to where you are now from that
teenager that you used to be.

Speaker 2 (04:37):
I love it. Thank you so much. Join those two books.
The last one was The Good Mistress by Anne Tennan
and the first one was The Book of Guilt by
Catherine Chidje.

Speaker 1 (04:47):
For more from the Sunday Session with Francesca Rudkin, listen
live to news Talks it Be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio