A children's Bible : a novel

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Title:

A children's Bible : a novel

Author:

Millet, Lydia, 1968- author.

ISBN:

9781324005032

Edition:

1st ed.

Physical Description:

224 pages ; 22 cm.

Subject Term:

Vacations -- Fiction.

Dysfunctional families -- Fiction.

Life change events -- Fiction.

Teenagers -- Fiction.

Conflict of generations -- Fiction.

Environmental disasters -- Fiction.

End of the world -- Biblical teaching -- Fiction.

Summary:

Lydia Millet's multilayered new novel - her first since the National Book Award Longlist Sweet Lamb of Heaven -- follows a group of children and their families on summer vacation at a lakeside mansion. The teenage narrator Eve and the other children are contemptuous of their parents, who spend the days and nights in drunken stupor. This tension heightens when a great storm arrives and throws the house and its residents into chaos. Named for a picture Bible given to Eve's little brother Jack, A Children's Bible is loosely structured around events and characters that often appear in collections of Bible stories intended for young readers. These narrative touchstones are imbedded in a backdrop of environmental and psychological distress as the children reject the parents for their emotional and moral failures-in part as normal teenagers must, and in part for their generation's passivity and denial in the face of cataclysmic change. --

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Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... Hardwood Creek Library (Forest Lake)	FICTION MIL	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Lake Elmo Library	FICTION MIL	Searching... Unknown
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	FICTION MIL	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Stillwater Public Library	FICTION MIL	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet's sublime new novel--her first since the National Book Award long-listed Sweet Lamb of Heaven--follows a group of twelve eerily mature children on a forced vacation with their families at a sprawling lakeside mansion.

Contemptuous of their parents, who pass their days in a stupor of liquor, drugs, and sex, the children feel neglected and suffocated at the same time. When a destructive storm descends on the summer estate, the group's ringleaders--including Eve, who narrates the story--decide to run away, leading the younger ones on a dangerous foray into the apocalyptic chaos outside.

As the scenes of devastation begin to mimic events in the dog-eared picture Bible carried around by her beloved little brother, Eve devotes herself to keeping him safe from harm.

A Children's Bible is a prophetic, heartbreaking story of generational divide--and a haunting vision of what awaits us on the far side of Revelation.

Author Notes

Lydia Millet is the author of Omnivores and George Bush, Dark Prince of Love. She lives in Tucson, Arizona and New York City.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Millet follows up Sweet Lamb of Heaven with a lean, ironic allegory of climate change and biblical comeuppance. A group of friends, successful "artsy and educated types," plan an "offensively long reunion" at a summer house "built by robber barons in the 19th century," somewhere on the East Coast. They bring along their children, ranging in age from prepubescent to 17, who devise inventive ways to ignore them. With the young teenage narrator, Evie, Millet perfectly captures the blend of indifference and scorn with which the teenagers view their boozy parents, emblematic of humanity's dithering in the face of environmental catastrophe: "They didn't do well with long-term warnings. Even medium-term." After a massive storm interrupts the summer idyll and brings looting and riots to New York and Boston, the parents lose themselves to booze and cocaine and the children flee with a menagerie of rescued animals, seeking refuge at a farmhouse. This lurid section, in which they are besieged by armed raiders searching for food, is shaky, and allusions to biblical tales such as Noah's Ark and the Ten Commandments feel facile, but the novel regains its footing once parents and children reunite, with the children calling the shots. Millet's look at intergenerational strife falls short of her best work. (May)

Booklist Review

When a group of families rent a robber-baron mansion by a lake for the summer, the teens, including Eve, Millet's (Fight No More, 2018) preternaturally compassionate and responsible narrator, separate themselves from their parents, caricatures of selfishness pursuing inebriation and other indulgences as the latest enactments of their failure to face facts about the imperiled world they've helped create. Eve is a steadfast guardian for her sweet, smart, animal-loving little brother, Jack, the moral compass in this increasingly horrifying climate-change fable as raging storms batter the old house and flood waters rise. With the scenarios in a children's bible surging to life, Jack believes he has broken the code: God equals nature; Jesus equals science. The young people, the true adults, shelter on a farm on higher ground, but their parents need their help, then vicious men with guns on the hunt for food invade. As bewitching, unflinching, wry, and profoundly attuned to the state of the planet as ever, supremely gifted Millet tells a commanding and wrenching tale of cataclysmic change and what it will take to survive.

Kirkus Review

A group of children are forced to fend for themselves in the face of rising sea levels, worsening storms, and willfully ignorant parents. This somber novel by Millet (Fight No More, 2018, etc.) is a Lord of the Flies--style tale with a climate-fiction twist. Evie, the narrator, is one of a group of kids and teenagers spending a summer with their parents at a lakeside rental mansion that's pitched as a vacation retreat but increasingly feels like a bulwark against increasingly intense weather on the coasts. The parents' chief activity involves stockpiling alcohol, leaving their children to explore the area. When a massive storm hits, the parents double down on self-medicating ("during the night the older generation had dosed itself with Ecstasy") while the kids explore further, ultimately arriving at a farm that's well stocked, at least for a while. The novel takes some time to find its footing, introducing a host of characters who are initially difficult to differentiate, but it ultimately settles on Evie and her rising fury at the grown-ups' incapacity to rise to a challenge and her younger brother, Jack, who's become increasingly obsessed with a Bible he's received and whether it can serve as a climate change survival handbook. (At one point he attempts to gather up animals, Noah-like.) Millet's allegorical messages are simple: The next generation will have to clean up (or endure) the climate mess prior ones created, and any notion that we can simply spend our way to higher ground is a delusion. Millet presses that last point in the novel's latter pages as the brief peace of the farm is disrupted in often horrific fashion. In the process, Jack's Bible plays an allegorical role too: Can we maintain civilization as we know it when the world descends into Old Testament--style chaos? A bleak and righteously angry tale determined to challenge our rationalizations about climate change. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal Review

Millet's follow-up to her award-winning Sweet Lamb of Heaven is a disturbing tale of a summer vacation gone wrong. Self-indulgent parents gather for a college reunion with their combined group of 12 children at a sprawling lakeside mansion. After locking up all cell phones for absolute relaxation, they show complete indifference as they disintegrate into drugs, alcohol, and sex. Teenage narrator Evie leads the loosely organized group of teens and preteens, reveling in their new freedom, but excitement turns to panic after a cataclysmic thunderstorm causes severe flooding and a power outage. Evie protects the younger ones, including her brother Jack, an innocent nature lover hauling around his collection of animals and plants. Obsessed with stories in his illustrated children's Bible, Jack, like Noah, must rescue his animals from this flood. Joined by Burl, the estate gardener, the children gather their slim resources, including salvaged cell phones, and take off in fishing boats for higher ground. Burl directs them to a farm that proves only a temporary salvation. The children prove resourceful but pay a huge price. VERDICT Millet delivers a tense, prophetic tale about inattention to warning signs with allusions to biblical tales and embedded themes of environmental and climactic disasters. A gripping page-turner with an end-times quality. [See Prepub Alert, 11/4/20.]--Donna Bettencourt, Mesa Cty. P.L., Grand Junction, CO

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Bound With These Titles

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Summary

Summary

Author Notes

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Booklist Review

Kirkus Review

Library Journal Review

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