I am pretty sure that I first heard about this book on the BBC Radio 2 Book Club podcast, and I thought it was something that would be right up my street. An alternate, dystopian, historical fiction book, is something that piqued my interest immediately.
Telling the story of the children’s homes, in a time post World War Two, where we meet three siblings, boys who are there believing that their parents have died. The three boys appear identical, identified by the colours they are dressed in, but they are not the same in personality, despite having the same upbringing and experience.
However, as you read the story, you find out the real reason the boys have spent much of their lives in the orphanage/children’s home. And the first twist genuinely made me gasp as I read it, and as we approached the second twist or revelation, I found myself identifying this as a thought-provoking book that would stay with me for quite some time.
I keep my reviews spoiler free, but this is just a genuinely great book. It is something that fans of Kazuo Ishiguro’s ‘Never Let Me Go’ will enjoy, I believe, as it is quite the exploration of the potential alternate world we could live in with the developments in science, if they had come at different points in history.
I also enjoyed the storytelling from the points of views of the three different characters, one of the sibling, Nancy (her story slowly revealed and linked) and the Minister of Loneliness (who is responsible for these children’s homes as they appear to be coming to the end of their purpose).
It is always fascinating to see how three different characters can see these in three very different ways, and that impacts how we read the story, as we know things that others may not. Alongside this, it is broken down into three books or parts, and this also makes for an interesting read when you look at the title of each section…but I will let you discover this for yourself.
This is a book that I already know who I would recommend it to – and some who I would encourage to pick it up, as I think it could be a story that would bring them into a whole new genre of books.